


Uphill Both Ways In The Snow

by BuckyKingOfMemes



Series: If You Give A Supersoldier Internet Access... [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Steve is a little shit, asks and answers from, bucky does not like to capitalize things, buckykingofmemes, from a tumblr account, the howlies take nothing seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 42
Words: 48,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10072283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuckyKingOfMemes/pseuds/BuckyKingOfMemes
Summary: Bucky provides bad advice and worse humor to all comers, plus occasional stories from the Good Old Days.Includes such tales as "How the Howlies got their name," "Steve and the Deathbike," and "Cows are Not Horses, Dumbass."(This story is listed as complete because it doesn't have a story arc, so you're never left on a cliffhanger. But it will continue to update as I answer questions and tell stories over on buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com)





	1. From the Get-Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic is functionally an archive of asks answered over at BuckyKingOfMemes on Tumblr. Not every ask from the blog makes it over here (for a variety of reasons) and not every ask even gets answered (because I get a LOT of asks), but if you would like to submit a question, you're welcome to do so through the tumbr askbox. Please do read the FAQ on the blog--one of the more important points is that my Bucky is not and will not be shipped with anyone (though you're welcome to headcanon whatever you like) so shipping asks will almost always be ignored.

[ _Theowlisthelimit_ ](http://theowlisthelimit.tumblr.com/) _asked: what's the worst thing_

That feeling when you’re stabbing someone and the knife hits bone. Super gross. Also, when Steve uses up all the hot water.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: hey asshole. Best thing about the future besides Steve’s new and improved™ ass?_

All you can eat buffets and NASA. And there’s nothing new or improved about Steve’s ass. It’s the same as it has been for the last 90 years - in need of kicking.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: are you left handed or right handed?_

I literally only have a right hand you ass. The other one is a terrifying weapon of destruction & mayhem.

* * *

 

  _Anonymous asked: what do you want to be when you grow up?_

Taller than Steve again.

* * *

 

_anonymous asked: I WILL GIVE YOU MY LEFT ARM_

 Trust me on this–that never goes well.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: have you tricked Clint into getting his tongue frozen to your arm yet?_

You clearly haven’t thought this through. If I did that, then Clint would be stuck to _me_. That would be terrible.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: #old man yells at cloud._

  1. It’s a storm cloud 2. Thor is inside it 3. I am yelling at Thor, not the cloud because 4. He somehow electrified the TOILET

* * *




[ _hannatude_ ](http://hannatude.tumblr.com/) _asked: Bucky, what do you use to get your hair looking so soft?! I've tried EVERYTHING and it just results in a fuzzy, frizzy mess._

Repeated deep-cooling treatments.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: do you think Steve should start using parachutes?_

Steve needs to start using parachutes, safety helmets, kneepads and floaties. And that’s on days he’s just hanging around indoors. The man is a menace.

* * *

 

[ _fahcraywood_ ](https://fahcraywood.tumblr.com/) _asked: have you (or has anyone else) ever tried braiding your hair?_

People who I know who can braid hair:

Clint. He insists that he ‘knows stuff.’

Thor. His hair might braid itself? Not sure but its braided a lot and I dunno who else might be doing it.

Tony. if you ask him about this he just starts talking about supermodels. (Pepper can’t braid her own hair but she can do other people’s.)

Steve. He was in a traveling show with like 50 girls. He can do very elaborate hairdos

People who cannot braid hair:

Nat. Braiding is not murder relevant and also she doesn’t care.

Me. I have a fucking robot hand.

* * *

 

_anonymous asked: Did u get a bath bomb tho?_

I mean…the problem with smelling like a cloud and being covered in glitter is that it really makes it hard to be stealthy. So…

What I am saying is that there is a Hydra base that is a lot more exploded and a lot sparklier than it used to be. It was not subtle at all.

* * *

 

_anonymous asked: hey Bucky, do you remember Namor? have you guys seen him lately?_

I had actually totally forgotten Namor until Tony & I were watching _Star Trek_ and Spock looked…really familiar?? Namor was cool but he always smelled a little like fish. I haven’t seen him but I haven’t been in the ocean much. Steve might know. He was in the ocean for a while.

* * *

 

_anonymous asked: what is your favorite hair color on girls?_

My favorite hair color on girls is whatever color of hair they want to have. In Nat’s case, that color is ‘blood of my enemies.’ for Pepper, it’s ‘slightly more civilized blood of my enemies’ 

Also I have been trying to talk Thor into dyeing his hair blue. I just feel like he could really make that work.

* * *

 

_anonymous asked: Hey Bucky! Do you ever give one of the members of your team a really dirty look and talk in Russian ((like about dogs and other things)) to Nat making that team mate think your saying mean things about them?_

People who speak Russian who live in the tower: Thor, Clint, Tony, Nat, Vision, Wanda, Pepper, Dr. Banner, me.

People who don’t speak Russian: Steve.

We tried doing the mean-but-really-normal Russian conversation gag with Steve once. But then he spent all afternoon making Sad Faces and later he sat me down for a Serious Conversation about if I held a grudge against him for the hydra stuff and so we don’t do that anymore.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: Which Avenger is the worst driver?_

Nat, Clint & Tony are all highly trained defensive drivers. Riding with them is like being in a car chase, but they know what they’re doing so it’s actually pretty safe.

Dr. Banner drives like he’s 90: super slow and cautious, but with occasional really terrifying bits of road rage. Tony likes to make him drive convertibles so that if he hulks out he won’t have to do it through the roof of a car.

Steve…I’m not sure if anyone ever really taught Steve how to drive or if he just figured it out on the fly. Either way no one wants to ride with Steve because he’s 1. A terrible driver and 2. Probably going to get his vehicle exploded sooner or later.

Thor and Vision don’t drive. 

Wanda drives like a Russian; which is to say, however the fuck she wants, and everyone else better make room for her. It’s a good thing she has magic powers or she’d probably have died in a car accident by now. 

It turns out I can drive anything like an expert. Literally anything. Two months ago, one of Tony’s competitors released a ‘top secret’ jetpack prototype and I already knew how to pilot it. No idea how or why.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: is peter not an avenger or does he just not drive_

That infant is not old enough to drive. He’s a baby. A weirdly flexible sneaky baby.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: Why do u call everyone by their 1st name except Dr. Banner?_

It is because I respect him so much as a scientist and also the Hulk is awesome. I tried calling Tony Dr. one time but he insisted that I actually had to call him Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Stark because he has 7 PhD’s. So instead when I’m talking to Tony I mostly just call him asshole.

* * *

 

 _Anonymous asked:_   _Have you ever gotten in a drinking contest with the others. Aren't you kinda like Thor and Steve (where they once drank that really fermented wine from Asgard and they weren't more than like slightly tipsy)? Is that at thing?_

 Yes, we do have drinking contests but we play in teams as part of an elaborate drinking game called ‘forget your traumas.’ 

Right now, the teams are “water-related trauma;” which is Tony and Steve, “brainwashing & assassins;” which his me, Nat and Clint, and “anger issues” which is Thor and Dr. Banner.

Currently the method of play is some kind of freeze tag? And the floor is lava. There are ping pong balls involved. Jarvis keeps track of the rules and tells people when they have to drink. We never know who wins though because we can’t agree if winning is the most or the least drunk.

* * *

 

[ _kalydae_ ](http://kalydae.tumblr.com/) _asked: bucky how come i can't keep a modern-day man?_

 I mean, probably you just need to get better at knot-tying. Or invest in some better handcuffs, maybe some more padlocks. Generally, if you really don’t want someone to get away you shoot out their kneecaps, but I don’t advise doing any of that because it’s pretty morally reprehensible.

…it’s just occurred to me that you might be talking about dating. If that’s the case I advise communication, respect, and asking for advice from someone who’s dated at all in the last 50 years.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: why is peter on ur team he’s like 11_

Look if you know any other 11-year olds that can lift ten tons please let me know. Seriously tell me, I will go recruit them myself, I love having small children around who can beat up Steve, it’s hilarious.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: do you know sign language? And does Clint ever lose/forget to put in/drop his hearing aids down a vent_

I know a bit of sign. I can communicate better in military hand-signal though. 

Weirdly, Tony is actually the best at sign. It turns out that when he was developing the gesture language he was using with the bots he learned a lot of different languages of sign. His vocabulary is very extensive.

Clint doesn’t often forget his hearing aids, but he does deliberately take them out when he’s ignoring people, because he’s a dick. And I am jealous of his ability to not listen to the stupid briefings.

* * *

 

  _anonymous asked: I feel like I've been teetering on the edge between fuck it calm and oh shit anxiety for the last four days and I think I'm falling over into the anxiety side. What do you do to cope with stress and anxiety??_

Today Dr. Banner was messing around in the kitchen. I think he was really really sleep deprived. I spent about an hour flicking dried peas into his hair, which is so curly and poofy it just kind of caught them. I would picture my stress and anxiety bundling up into tiny little green hulks and then I would release them back to Dr. Banner, who knows what to do with Hulks. 

Mostly I make myself comfortable and then engage in a low-stress activity that requires enough mental activity that I don’t get caught up in overthinking. Sometimes I knit really hideous scarves to give to Steve, because he hasn’t figured out yet that I’m doing it on purpose. Once, when I was stress-fidgeting really bad, Nat painted my nails so I had to stop, and we watched a movie.

Dr. Banner didn’t notice the peas. I wonder if he has yet.

* * *

 

[ _Marvelstorage_ ](http://marvelstorage.tumblr.com/) _asked: Dear Bucky, I just sent my vote by mail in and am feeling really bummed out. Do you know any ways to make me feel better after this god-awful election?_

Whenever I get bummed out by politics I look up baby animal videos instead. Or I make a really elaborate hot chocolate with peppermint and marshmallows and whipped cream. Or I feed birds in the park, therefore giving fuel with which to poop on people’s heads. And I tell them to fly to Washington DC and start looking for idiots to drop turds on. Usually this is pretty useless, but last time I did it I brought Sam to translate, so hopefully soon a particular moron will wind up with doo in the ‘do.

I realize it is late and probably the pigeons are sleeping. But I like to picture it anyway.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: Do you practice your strut or does it come naturally?_

 Do you know I’m not actually sure?? Steve says that I didn’t walk like that before the war–I strutted but very differently. Which means that it’s a Hydra thing, and I have no idea if they taught me to walk like that or if that’s my most natural murder walk. I talked it over with Clint and Tony and we agreed that its hilarious to picture some Hydra scientists working on developing the perfect runway murder strut.

We may never know, because I may never remember. But if you say the words ‘Work it, soldat, work it’ in a heavy Russian accent around Clint or Tony they will 100% laugh so hard they cry.

* * *

 

 _Anonymous asked:_   _Re: The Murder Strut - I could say Gotta Be The Shoes, but does the walk still work barefoot, or does it rely on a certain style of combat boot?_

Since the conversation I mentioned involved Tony it naturally also involved some scientific experimentation. The strut works in combat boots, boat shoes, bunny slippers, barefoot, and in six-inch heels.

It is apparently the most terrifying in heels.

* * *

 

[ _Nebulaeofpie_ ](https://nebulaeofpie.tumblr.com/) _asked: Dearest Bucky: What has been the weirdest experience you had at one of Tony's parties?_

Going to Tony’s parties at all is a weird experience. I always feel kind of like I’m supposed to be undercover or keeping track of a date or something. Usually I wind up having a nice conversation with someone who’s hanging on the fringes, and then Lewis runs up to me after and goes ‘dude, that was LADY GAGA’ like I’m supposed to know what the hell that means. This is America, we don’t have nobility. It’s not patriotic.

I had a very nice conversation with this strange old man named Stan last time. Nice guy, but he can’t hold is liquor.

Most of them are nice people though. I’m getting used to it. Weirdly more of them know who I am than the other way around. And since problems with mental disorders and substance abuse are not only common among the super famous but also hugely publicized, most of them are sympathetic and pretty cool about stuff. If you’d told me this was who I’d be hanging out with when I was younger I’d never have believed you. 

The best thing is the catering. Say what you will about Tony, the man knows how to cater.

But the weirdest party experience is one I’m not actually allowed to talk about. The Hulk was involved. So were two ice sculptures of Iron Man, a live lobster, and Mjolnir. Clint lost an eyebrow. It was not a good look for him.


	2. Introductions and Peggy Carter: Certified Badass

_Anonymous asked: What kind of animal would you be if you had to pick one?_

Maybe a bear? Bears have it pretty good. They get to sleep all winter. They can eat anything they want. They can lay in a river and let fish jump into their mouths all day.

No one fights bears except me, with my shirt off in the snow, because I'm a badass.

Otherwise, it's pretty good to be a bear

_(Mod Hell: Bucky actually does fight a bear shirtless in the comics. Look it up.)_

* * *

_A nonymous asked: Hey Bucky, do you have any advice for when your having a bad day and need to be cheered up? I'm having a bad day and trying to cheer myself up but nothing seems to work._

1\. Find a pet store or humane society that has adoptable cats or dogs. Go pet one for half an hour. Many places encourage you to do this to help socialize the animals. Be sure to tell Sam he can't come. One of the cats might eat him.

2\. Go to a dollar store and pick out the worst $1 movie you can find. Make a blanket fort and watch it, ideally with a friend. I recommend Thor. He can narrate any movie and make it sound like it's freakin' Lord of the Rings.

3\. Take a nap. A regular one, not a frozen one.

4\. Compliment the next five people you see. You get to chose if those compliments are menacingly specific or not. "Wow Tony. Those are some very nice eyeballs. I'd love to keep them in a jar on my desk and just look at them all day."

5\. Find a bad joke site. Read them out loud to a pet or friend until one of you starts laughing. Stare them down until they stop. Continue reading. Repeat.

* * *

  _Anonymous  asked: Could you tell us something about Peggy Carter that is not in the official files? Do you remember her at all? _

Peggy had the dirtiest mouth of any of the Howlies. Let me tell you, Peggy Carter is the most graceful bastard on the planet; you'd never guess she could out-cuss a battalion of Marines.  We were on leave in some town somewhere, us Howlies, and we got well and truly drunk--Pegs included. Some idiot enlisted Navy guy grabbed her in the bar, and she spun around like a ballerina, rattled off the filthiest insult any of us had ever heard, and laid him out flat with a gorgeous haymaker. Half the bar fell in love on the spot. 

 The other half was not so enamored. Best barfight I've ever been in.

Pegs was a real classy lady.

* * *

_A nonymous asked: Hey Bucky, when did you find out that Clint was deaf?_

Steve introduced me to Clint with the following sentence: "Buck, this is Clint. He’s deaf, and if you sneak up on him he will shoot you. Maybe not right away. Maybe not lethally. But you will get shot."

Which, to be fair, Steve sometimes has to introduce me as "This is Bucky. If you start speaking Russian he will probably knock you unconscious after the first syllable. And he won't be nice about it."

We all have our quirks.

(And yes, i can knock someone unconscious nicely. I just don't.)

* * *

_Anonymous  asked: BUCKY I JUST STARTED DATING MY CRUSH LAST NIGHT AND IM GOING THROUGH SO MANY EMOTIONS I DONT KNOW HOW I FEEL. HELP?? IF YOU CAN?? IDK_

1\. Try not to murder them.

2\. Communicate often and clearly.

3\. If you need to punch out your feelings, do so on inanimate objects.

4\. Screaming is a good way to express excitement, but try not to do it late at night or in an ‘I'm being stabbed’ kind of way.

Also, congrats.

* * *

_A nonymous asked: BUCKY HELP ME HOW DO YOU GET RID OF A SPIDER IN THE SHOWER? (aaaahhhh)_

If it’s Peter, just walking in there will usually make him scream and start running. If it’s Nat, you’re just screwed. And don’t ask why she was there in the first place. 


	3. New Dog, Old Tricks

 

_[hazydaytime](http://hazydaytime.tumblr.com/) asked:  _ _Hey Bucky, so yesterday I got done cleaning my room up really nice. You know, washing clothes and sheets, wiping down furniture, moving stuff instead of just sweeping around it, and febreezing the shit out of everything. This morning one of my puppies decided to go in to my super clean room, pee on my sheets, and then walk out. I don't know who it was, and I'm just done with everything. So, while I'm washing my bed sheets AGAIN, you got any good stories that might lift my spirits some?_

Well, once upon a time when he was a littler little shit than he is now, Steve got in fights all the time. What am I saying; Steve still gets into fights all the time. But back in the day he lost them a lot.

So anyway, little Steve was walking home from school all by his lonesome. According to him, he heard something down an alley, and, being a tiny fearless moron, went to go check it out. What he found was four bigger boys throwing rocks at and kicking the rangiest mutt you ever saw. Poor thing was all curled up -- could barely tell it was a dog. So Steve naturally goes running in there and starts punchin' with those itsy-bitsy fists of his. Just plows into two of them. He startled them so bad that they just took off. It was a pure shock victory; they could have handed him his dumb little ass if they’d paused to think about it, but he came out of nowhere so fast they just ran. Steve was expecting them to fight back too, so when they left it threw him off so much he actually fell down, and beaned himself on the curb. He picked himself up, bleeding all down the face, and went to check on the dog. 

Which, naturally, bites him. Stevie started howling.

This is when I caught up with him.

I show up, and there’s Steve, sitting on the ground, blood all over his face, and this huge raggedy dog latched on his arm, wailing like hes being murdered. The damn kid wouldn't cry if you punched his face in, but this poor scared dog took hold of him–didn't even break skin, mind you–and he's yelling like his lungs are gonna burst.

I go running down the alley towards them, about fit to grab a rock myself. I like dogs, but not ones that are biting Steve.

And that's when Steve’s dog allergy kicked in.

Because of course Steve is allergic to dogs.

Steve starts wheezing, and the dog gets this look on his face like he’s in waaay over his head, and goes running off. I picked up Steve and started running for his place, where his asthma meds were, him gaspin' away the whole time, me panting too because for a little guy Steve was heavy. 

So I bust in the door of the Rogers' apartment, and Mrs. Sarah sees us and she about has a heart attack. Mrs. Sarah was a nurse, so she went for first aid right away. After Stevie was okay, she asked him what happened.

And Steve, still breathing hard, covered in blood, being the moron that he is, goes: "Ma, I found us a pet dog."


	4. Life Advice From A Complete Disaster

_Anonymous  asked: Thank you, Bucky, for this blog. You have made me genuinely smile on some rough days and I really appreciate it. Quick question, if you don't mind, does Hawkeye really have a nest or is that just people shit-talking?_

He has a nest. He actually has several. There's a couple made of blankets in the vents, stocked with snacks and weaponry, and there's one under that big solid looking conference room table on the 73d floor. It looks like it's solid, but it's actually hollow. And it's _full_ of blankets. There are a few more scattered around.

And he tends to do this weird thing where he always wants to be in the highest spot in any room. If he feels safe, he doesn't hide that he's up there. Which sounds kinda sweet, until you open the fridge door in the kitchen with the lights off at 4 am and suddenly realize that there is a grown man on top of the refrigerator, _sleeping with his eyes open._

* * *

  _Anonymous  asked: Am I supposed to stalk my crush in real life or over social media? Both?_

Use all avenues available to you. If they are foolish enough to have social media, stalk it. Follow them in disguise. Tap their phones. Bug their car and house. Steal their trash and study it. And finally, when the time is right, you strike and crush them.

Steve has informed me that all of this is bad advice and mostly illegal. But who listens to Captain America anyway

* * *

_A nonymous asked: Bucky do people have nicknames for you?_

Most people refer to me as god. As in ‘Please! god! Stop shooting me!’

Sam tried calling me ‘Buckko’ once. That didn’t fly. And neither did he for a while. 

Tony has called me Jimothy a few times, and I guess I don’t mind?? It’s actually pretty decent for a Tony nickname. 

Peter tried calling me ‘Mr. Barnes sergeant sir’ which was pretty great.

Steve calls me ‘jerk’ so often that sometimes that’s what I tell people my first initial stands for. Jerk Buchanan Barnes.

* * *

 

_A nonymous asked:  So we know how Steve introduced you to Clint. What did he say about the others, like say Tony and Bruce, when he introduced them?_

Tony introduced himself. I believe the sentence was ‘Mention my dead parents and you’ll join them.’ And after that initial awkwardness we were pretty much cool.

Steve introduced Dr. Banner as ‘Tony’s wiser half’ and failed to mention that he was the Hulk for like three weeks, when it came up in conversation and I thought he was joking. by that point I’d already rigged the glitter bombs in the labs, so…

The first thing the Hulk said to me was ‘SPARKLE SMASH!’

Turns out he's down with glitter. 

* * *

  _[dark-and-smokey-mind](http://dark-and-smokey-mind.tumblr.com/)  asked:  Bucky I’m sick do you and/or anyone else have any good nonalcoholic remedies for a stuffy nose and sore throat?_

 Steve used to get colds _alll_ the time. And if he didn't have a cold, he probably had clogged sinuses from a bloody nose. Our go-to was lemon and honey tea, when we could afford it. And when we couldn't, he would gargle and drink warm salt water, which will clear your nose and throat for about half an hour before you have to do it again. 

And all of you are missing out, because there are few things more hilarious than Steve's dumb little face, bleedin' all over after yet another fistfight, trying to gargle water while I was listing off the raunchiest jokes I knew just to watch him splutter. His face was already red from bleeding but I made it red from blushin'. Little shit deserved it though, picking fights all over the damn city.

The man can shoot a Nazi in the face stone cold, but if you tell him a joke with boobs in it he about dies.

* * *

_A nonymous asked:  *brings sugar cookies shaped and decorated like knives* have you considered knitting as a therapy? You can take it with you places and make cool stuff and have convenient weapons for stabbing._

 

I actually already know how to knit. Lots of us WWII guys do actually, because a lot of us knitted our own winter gear. Weirdly, despite being such an artsy guy, Steve never got the hang of it. One time I caught him just using a whole ball of yarn as a hand warmer. So me and the Howlies used to knit stuff for him, so he wouldn't freeze (Yeah. That worked out well in the long run) when we were camped out at night. And it was the fucking ugliest knitwear anyone ever made. We all used to practice new patterns and stitches on his stuff, so it wound up being this kinda camo effect with whatever drab-color yarn we had to spare. He looked like some kind of yarn monster that the flag had puked on.

Somehow some of it wound up in the Smithsonian somewhere. They describe it as ‘a form of rudimentary camouflage the Commandos employed’ which is…

We were just giving Steve shit.

* * *

  _[greatnerdbeard](http://greatnerdbeard.tumblr.com/) asked: _ _Bucky. Do you have any advice for someone going into a Job interview tomorrow? Thanks in advance._

 

Make lists of your skills, so that when you are asked you will be able to respond promptly. Also, prepare to provide on-the-spot demonstrations of those skills, and bring whatever props you might need, such as whole pies, knitting needles, or knives. 

In case you do not get hired, or your interviewer is secretly evil, do NOT provide honest answers to ‘what are your weaknesses’ questions. Do NOT tell them things like “bullets” “specifically, my achilles tendon” or “puppy dog eyes”. Instead, use believable but fake answers like “really small knives” “romantic subplots in action movies” or “sauerkraut.” 

* * *

_Anonymous  asked:  Bucky, help! what do you give for Christmas to someone who has everything?_

Give them nothing. It's the one thing they don't already have.

Otherwise, gifts that involve spending time together or are some sort of experience are a smart move. For example, I once got Steve tickets to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island.

He expressed his gratitude by vomiting on me.

* * *

_[dvini](http://dvini.tumblr.com/) asked: _ _Hi Bucky. I'm 18 and I just got a new job as a pre school teacher. I'm really excited but a little terrified too. Any advice? (I love your blog btw)_

1\. Stay calm. Children can sense fear.

2\. Wear comfortable shoes. If everything goes wrong you may have to run for your life. You may also have to do that if everything goes right.

3\. Remember that children aren't ready for real knives, guns, and explosives until about 8, so even if they seem competent, don't arm them.

4\. Confidence and consistency are key; omnipotence is not. It is okay to say you don't know something. It is not okay to act erratically. They are still learning how to anticipate behavior and may strike if startled.

5\. Use sweets and naptimes judiciously. Coincidentally, this is also a good technique for dealing with geniuses and supersoldiers.

* * *

_A nonymous asked: Hey Bucky I'm currently leaving an abusive relationship and I'm feeling a little guilty and alone and down. Got any advice?_

 1. Good for you. Leave that bastard. Preferably, leave them somewhere unpleasant.

2\. You deserve better. Go easy on yourself. Get yourself some nice hot chocolate and give yourself time. Recovery isn't easy or linear, but it is possible, and you can do it if I can. Think of how sympathetic you would be if it was your best friend in your situation, and treat yourself like you would treat them. 

3\. You're not alone, or at least, you don't have to be. There are probably people in your life who are really glad to see you out of that situation, and would love to be able to offer some help or support. Reconnect with those people, or go out and start looking for people to make friends with. It's a lot to deal with on your own, but the good news is that you don't have to. And there's all kinds of support groups these days. I, for example, have joined a support group for brainwashed assassins. So far, it's just me and Nat and Clint. We’re hoping we never get more members. 

* * *

 

 

 

_Anonymous  asked: _ _Hey Bucky, I saw my little brother today for the first time in a year (college) and the little dork is now like eight inches taller than me. How do you deal with that feeling of your tiny now towering over you?_

Sometimes when Steve is being a little shit I just sweep his legs out from under him. Then he's short again.

Other times I just yell "PIGGYBACK" and jump on him, thus elevating my view above his, as is right.

If you bundle a formerly tiny person in enough blankets the forced perspective may make them seem tiny again.

Usually I just retaliate by punching him in the arm, and when he complains I just say that I was aiming for his head.


	5. Magnum Opus and Other Nightmares

_O[taku-tales](http://otaku-tales.tumblr.com/) asked: Hi Bucky, I have a friend who's impossible to buy for; he has enough money that when he wants anything he buys it. So this year I painted him something but I'm not great at art. So whats the worst thing Steve's painted for you and did you love it anyway?_

I've known Steve a long time.  A loooonnggg time.

Long enough that I was there for his first attempts at painting. 

Let me tell you, I am a very supportive friend when I'm not trying to kill you. So when wee Stevie decided to try his hand at painting, I was supportive. I was encouraging.

I did not fully consider how colorblind Steve was. 

Steve wanted to do a big painting. His mom had gotten him some pigments as a gift--saved up for them. He decided he was gonna show her how thankful he was by painting her life-size. But the master tactician was foiled by not having a canvas big enough.

I am a supportive friend. So supportive that I told him he could use my bedroom wall, and just bring Mrs. Sarah over and show her when he was done. I was like, eight, okay, this is sound logic for an eight year old. Steve agreed, but insisted I had to leave while he worked. So I wandered around all Saturday, got in some trouble, then stopped by the apartment to see if Steve was done yet. He poked his head out the window, face covered in paint, and said "Yeah, go get my mom."

So I did. 

I didn't tell her what it was for. Mrs. Sarah, trooper that she was, fresh off shift, stumbled along after me to go see what Stevie had done now.

We got to my place and Stevie flung the door open.

 

See, the thing with art is that it's a skill, and it takes practice. Steve, at age seven, had not had much practice. And he was colorblind. And he wasn't tall enough to actually paint a full sized adult human.

What he did paint was…well…

Green. In the face and skin regions. And sort of bent over sideways, which was how he'd solved the shortness problem, and was rather too long in the arms, legs and fingers. The eyes were huge and electric blue, the mouth big and toothful.

We both got in trouble, although mostly our parents thought it was pretty funny.

 

I didn't. That monster Stevie painted on my wall gave me nightmares for months, until we painted over it.

 


	6. Workout Routines for the Clinically Insane

_Anonymous  asked: Dear Buckster. I have an Angry Smol friend. She is pissed about the election, and dudebros and misogyny. . I too, am angry and willing to storm the Patriarchy, right beside her. But she has a habit of wandering about alone, saying "fight me" with no back up. You kept your Angry Smol alive for years. HOW DO I KEEP MY ANGRY SMOL SAFE? Do I need to get a leash? Bribery? Sit on her? Also, how do I keep her away from Mad Scientists with Weird Serums and Gamma Rays?_

 Well, once upon a time, I tried to teach Stevie some fighting basics, when it was clear that he would 1. not be getting much taller and 2. not be any less of a little shit.

That was only kind of successful. I was a boxing champ back in the day, so I knew how to punch, and I taught Stevie how, as best he could. But he only used that skill to go start fights with people, so... 

Stevie was predictable though. If I knew where he was, I could pretty reliably guess where exactly he would be when he started throwing punches. That helped.

Sitting on her will only work until one of you gets hungry. And she'll probably just try to use a leash as a weapon. 

Frankly, the whole mad scientist scene isn't all bad. Steve wins a lot more fights, and I still look young and gorgeous 70 years down the line. And nobody really picks on the Hulk, so at least you wouldn't have to worry about that. 

But honestly, your best bet is forming an Angry Smol defense squad. Keeping Stevie alive was a lot easier when the Howlies were in the picture, and these days I have all manner of crazy backup. 

Hasn't stopped Stevie from picking fights with idiots though. I know a loosing battle when I see one.

* * *

 

_Anonymous  asked: I'm having to get in shape for my top surgery some time next year, but I'm really, really bad at it. What are your top workout tips?_

My workout routine is like this. Let me know if it works out for you.

1\. Get drafted into the army.

2\. Get experimented on by Nazis.

3\. Full body workout by means of keeping an idiot alive during the Second World War when all he wants to do is punch every Nazi in the face.

4\. Loose weight by amputating left arm.

5\. Get experimented on by Nazis.

6\. Full body workout by means of trying to kill that idiot who is simultaneously insisting I'm the one person on earth he _DOESN'T_ want to punch in the face.

7\. Be super ripped.

* * *

_A nonymous asked: Got any advice for finals stress?_

 Oh man. I haven't had to take a written test since the forties but boy do I know about stress. 

It's easy to get stuck in your own head and tunnel vision when you're under stress. Try to widen your perspective to be sure you're not missing important things, and don't forget that if your body is functioning suboptimally, your brain will be too. So sleep, shower, eat, etc. Sleeping will actually help your brain integrate data better, which is why I am so damn smart. All that cryosleep paid off. 

Bruce and Jane say that you should take your review materials to your professor. Apparently most of them will be willing to go over them with you and tell you if you're missing things or have something wrong? This sounds like cheating to me but I guess its allowed?? It seems very underhanded. I like it.

Sometimes, depending on the kind of person you are, it can help if you plan to look nice. Lay out nice outfits for yourself; dress like the kind of person who is going to succeed. Con your own brain into believing you are going to be successful, and it will actually help you. This is difficult for me sometimes because I generally look like my life went horribly off the rails many years ago, but in a very muscular way. I would be more concerned about that if Nat hadn't said that the look was ‘working for me.’ I will get back to you when I figure out if that is an insult or not.

* * *

_A nonymous asked: I know you must get a lot of these but any advice for someone having a bad day. I'm just sad for no good reason and I just have no drive. Please._

1\. Hot drink. Warm blanket. Fluffy socks. Bad TV to mock.

2\. There are roughly 525 million dogs on this planet. And probably some more in space. I'll go ask Thor about that.

3\. Blow something up. Even if its just microwaving a CD, destruction can be therapeutic. It's why Dr. Banner is so well adjusted. 

4\. The funny thing about time is that it passes, whether you want it to or not. Sometimes when life sucks, you just gotta wait it out. And sometimes when life sucks you gotta go beat up life. Up to you to figure out which is which.

* * *

  

_Anonymous  asked: Can you lift mijonir with your metal arm? Since its a machine and technically not a living part of you you should be able to lift it._

 I can lift Mjolnir with my sweet robot arm, yes. And also with my flesh arm. 

It turns out that Thor and I have a lot in common, and also that being very polite and just a little bit seductive works on hammers. Who knew??

(Me. I knew. Which is why I made a bet with Clint that i could lift Mjolnir, and also why Clint was spotted running through the tower in a Hello Kitty costume yesterday.)

* * *

 


	7. Holidaze

_Hey Buck, do you celebrate Christmas or Chanukkah? Or do you not celebrate anything at all?_

My mom was Jewish, and my dad was Catholic. It was kinda a weird combo, to be honest. My dad died when i was pretty young–WWI, you know–and we observed some Christmas traditions in his honor, but my mother celebrated Chanukkah, so we did too. She and the neighbors, an old Jewish couple from Romania who used to keep an eye on us kids while she was working, taught us some Yiddish. Steve picked some up too, but his first language was actually Gaelic, so he had a really hilarious accent sometimes. Lemmie tell you, Gaelic + Brooklyn + Yiddish does not make for a very comprehensible accent. Poor little guy. 

Anyways, I grew up mostly during the Great Depression, so while we did celebrate, we were very poor, and had to make do with what we could. A lot of the local Jewish families got together to celebrate–pooled resources and kinda potlucked some things. There were a lot of families with missing members, people lost to the Great War or sickness, and we all watched each others backs. I don't remember a lot of details, but there’s this lingering sense of closeness that I still cherish, even though almost every one from those days is dead by now.

The Avengers celebrate the holidays together, these days, and between the group of us, we cover pretty much all the winter holidays. Thor does yule stuff. Jane and Wanda are also Jewish, and Steve does a very Catholic Christmas thing with Matt. Sam does Kwanzaa, and I think Fury does too? The man is an enigma. Dr. Banner does…some form of seasonal holiday? He says he grew up with Christmas but isn't super attached. I think he’s planning on spending afternoon on Christmas day with Steve at a soup kitchen. I’ll probably be joining them, as will most of the others. Scott and Peter are at home doing Christmas with their families. Nat does Christmas too but somehow there's a lot of vodka and Russian foods involved, and shes been telling Thor Krampus stories for like a week now.  Tony grew up with Christmas but now he prefers to celebrate Festivus (though he is all about the latkes), and I'm really looking forwards to wrestling him later. He does claim to be the head of the household. Clint has jumped on the Festivus bandwagon expressly because he likes the ‘airing of the grievances’ part.

It's not like what I grew up with. There’s a menorah in the window across from a fireplace that's burning a Yule log, and the Christmas tree is actually floating about three feet off the ground to make room for the presents underneath (thanks, Tony). Outside, New York is covered in snow. 

But I'm here, safe and warm and relatively intact, celebrating the holidays with family. And that is pretty good, my friends. That is pretty dang good.


	8. Weapons Are People (Too)

_Anonymous  asked: _ _Hey Buck, do you know any meals you can make without making too much noise? If so how long does that last?_

I dunno about meals, but I believe that if you make enough of anything, it counts as a meal. Lately, since its been cold, I've been loving cinnamon. So here are three food items I make a lot of when it's cold.

1\. Hot chocolate. Getting a decent powdered mix is fine, or you can use actual chocolate if you wanna. Then add in some vanilla extract, or some cinnamon, or even some peppermint extract. Get fancy! Clint and I have experimented with things to add to hot chocolate a lot, and some of the weirder stuff that works is: pumpkin pie spices & a little apple juice, butterscotch candies, or pineapple juice.

2\. Cinnamon roasted almonds. Coat a bunch of almonds with an egg white and a little water, then toss a mix of brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon and a little salt in there until they’re all coated in a nice sugary layer. Spread them out on a greased pan and bake at 350 for an hour, tossing and mixing them every 15 min so they don't turn into a single solid sheet. Actually. That would awesome, if you could pry it off the pan. I might try that. 

2\. Bagels. Get yourself a plain bagel. Toast it. Slather it with cream cheese, then put honey and cinnamon on top of that. Remarkably delicious.

However the problem with these things (which can be made pretty quietly, if your appliances don't beep) is that they are quite fragrant. So even if I make them totally silently, within a few minutes I usually wind up with company because of the nice smell. 

Often I make these foods late at night, which summons all the other insomniacs to the kitchen. I don't mind though. Either I have enough to share or enough knives to defend my foodstuffs.

* * *

  _[sleepyheathen](http://sleepyheathen.tumblr.com/) asked: I can't thank you enough for keeping this blog free of ships._

 

Much like aircraft and motorcycles, Steve cannot be trusted with ships. Therefore, it is my job to keep him as far away from them as I can.

* * *

_ anonymous asked: So... Steve's dog, Tony's cat, you're raccoon, Clint & Sam are birds, Nat's spider... But what animal is Thor?_

Pikachu

1\. yellow  
2\. cute  
3\. lightning

* * *

_A nonymous asked: how do u shower ???? do u like stick your arm out of the shower and shower w/ the door open. i've wondered this my entire life, james. how do u wash ur hand(s)_

Like a normal person?? With soap?? My sickass robot arm is waterproof, buddy. I'm not like the wicked witch or an iphone, I can't be defeated by a bucket of water. 

 

* * *

_Anonymous  asked: Do all your weapons have names?_

Nah, I go through weapons too quickly for that. I do have some favorites, though, that have been with me for a while and have picked up nicknames. There’s a real nasty grenade launcher that I frequently use to make holes in buildings that Clint insists on calling my ‘lockpick’ as if I don't know how to break in like a normal assassin. I know how to pick a lock, Clint. Exploding stuff is just more fun.

I have a set of sweet little throwing knives that Natasha usually calls 'the manicure kit.' I would object to that more if they didn't come in handy so often on nail painting night. 

I have a regular claw hammer which has seen combat and is officially named the ‘Hammer Of Barnes.” Thor blessed it for me. I don't know if that makes it more effective in a fight, but it is pretty cool. 

I have a big trench knife that has been called ‘Mantra’ after that one time when Dr. Banner was about to Hulk out in a hospital ward because it was being attacked by Hydra agents. Clint was trying (poorly) to keep him calm, and was yelling ‘ _do your breathing exercises!! use your mantras!!’_  At which point Dr. Banner grabbed my knife and stabbed a Hydra guy. He did not hulk out. We were very proud of him.

I once told Tony that my fists were named ‘business’ and ‘pleasure,’ but I was just messing with him. His face was pretty priceless. 

But my favorite named weapon has always been my throwing Steve. By which I mean the Captain America that I sometimes physically hurl at my enemies. It may not be the most dignified way to get Steve into a fight but it sure is effective.

* * *

_A nonymous asked:  hey buck my arm really hurts maybe you dont do fluff but anything you say would make it fee better. please? thank you._

  
  Well, I can testify that removing the arm won't help with that problem. 

And neither will ice.

But if there's anything I know about pain–and I know a lot about pain, because I myself am a huge pain, primarily in the ass of overbearing superheroes who think stars are a solid addition to any stripey outfit–its that it sucks a lot. And there's not a lot to do but endure it and try to distract yourself in the meantime. 

Personally, when I’m trying to focus on something other than pain, I use a strong physical stimuli elsewhere in my body, like pressing an icecube inside my wrist or pinching my earlobe (not hard enough to do damage, just enough to distract) and also I try to find something else to focus my brain on. Sometimes it’s a book or a movie. Sometimes I get in really petty text arguments with Clint. He’s good for that. 

But mostly? I wait it out and remember that it's gonna pass. Even though it sucks a lot in the meantime, it’ll pass. 

Buddy, if I could give you a hug without wanting to stab somebody, I would. Instead, I'm gonna advise that you treat yourself to a cupcake or some hot chocolate, since that is the food equivalent of a hug. 

* * *

 

_A nonymous asked:  Is there a story behind the blue jacket?_

 Kind of. 

Besides me being a fashion bombshell, even in the midst of WWII, the jacket was nice and warm and full of pockets. Which is always a nice thing when you have to literally carry everything you need with you everywhere you go.

But on top of that, I grew up with tiny pre-human-lab-rat Steve. Among a very long list of medical issues which fueled his must-punch-everything attitude, Steve was colorblind. (In a very typically Steve move, he decided to become an artist, despite not being able to see half the colors out there.) 

The modern term for what he was is ‘Protanopia,’ which is a type of red-green colorblindness. Which meant his ability to see the color red was not so great. Pretty much everything in the red spectrum got toned down to taupes and greys, and yellows and greens were kinda muted. But his ability to see the color blue was basically unimpaired, so blue things stood out in his field of vision. Back in the day, I wore a lot of blue because it was easier for Steve to spot, and somewhere along the line it just kinda became my favorite color, and I tended to pick blue clothes out of habit. 

These days Steve’s favorite color is red, just for the novelty of being able to see it.   


	9. How the Howlies Got Their Name

 

 

 

_[Rowana-renee](http://rowana-renee.tumblr.com/) asked: how many cookies would it take to bribe you into telling me a story, bucky? They're homemade, and any story will do._

 

All of them. I will tell you the story while I wait for all of the cookies.

Once upon a time, a little shit decided to go fight Nazis. 

Usually when I start a story that way, it’s a Steve story. But this time it’s a me story.

I too fought Nazis, my friend, and it was not fun at all. It turns out Nazis don't like being fought, and will fight back. This caused us a great deal of stress and trenchfoot. 

As you may or may not know, my Nazi fighting buddies were called the Howling Commandos. We had a reputation as being ‘howling mad’ which most people assumed is where our name came from. 

It is not.

So shortly after we’d signed up as Steve's unit, we got sent out on a sort of breaking-in mission. It was supposed to be a pretty routine just-behind-enemy-lines gig, mostly to see how we’d do as a team. At that point, we were the first ‘integrated’ squad under American command, so they wanted to be sure we were up to snuff. Basically, they sent us a few miles into a relatively lightly-fortified occupied area to blow up a few supply trucks. It went pretty smoothly. We were still getting to know each other, a bit. We’d met in the Hydra camp in Austria and bonded pretty well there, but it wasn't like we were sitting around doing icebreaker questions. So on that first mission we spent a lot of time chatting, getting a better feel for each other as people. Like summer camp, but with more potential for death, and shooting of Nazis, explosions, and overgrown science experiments in spangly pants.

So maybe not like summer camp at all. I wouldn't know, I never went to summer camp. 

Anyways, we blew up the supply trucks and we were headed back towards base when we came across a nice little stream. Most of us were pretty dirty, so we agreed to take a few minutes, strip down and wash up. The area we were in was supposed to be secure; it was a slightly disputed border area, but it had been safely in Allied hands for months. Probably it wasn’t the smartest call, but sometimes you get dirt places you never wanted dirt and are willing to literally risk death to get rid of that dirt. 

We left our gear in a little stand of trees on the far side of the stream and washed up. 

At this point, DumDum Dougan was establishing his reputation as the Toughest Guy Ever, which was a rough gig when one of your squad mates is Captain America, who literally walks off bullet wounds like a moron. Nevertheless, DumDum had the mustache and was determined to be the manliest man around, so when the rest of us got in, clean, and back out as fast as we could manage, because the water was freezing, DumDum decided to prove how macho he was by pretending he wasn't cold at all, and the rest of us were wimps. 

Naturally, the rest of us thought he was ridiculous. We were all pretty much dressed and good to go, and DumDum was still sitting in an ice-cold stream in April, bragging about how tough he was. I, being a little shit, covertly suggested we play a little prank. 

The rest of us finished gearing up, then grabbed his things and started running. His pack, his gun, his boots…all his clothes except his bowler hat, which was hanging off the handle of a knife he’d stuck in the tree. We knew he’d stop to get the hat, and that gave us a head start.

As soon as we started running, DumDum came out of the stream after us, and as expected, stopped to get his hat and knife. We had a decent head start, and he was yelling at the top of his lungs after us. We were all laughing our heads off, because he looked like a complete idiot, running after us brandishing a knife, in nothing but a bowler hat. 

Unbeknownst to us, a Nazi squad had been sneaking through the woods ahead of us, and were setting up an ambush on one of our transport trucks. They were all tucked away in the underbrush, waiting for the transport to get close enough, and had just popped out of the shrubbery and fired their first couple shots.

Which was approximately when a ragtag-looking, still-wet group of cackling maniacs led by the bastard child of Paul Bunyan and Lady Liberty burst out of the treeline, being chased by an angry naked man in a bowler hat with a knife. 

There was a very long moment when everyone stopped shooting at everyone else and stared at us. 

And then everyone went back to shooting at everyone else.

But the ambush was angled to ensnare the transport coming up the road. We came from behind them, and they had pretty much no cover from our angle. As soon as we realized we’d run into a combat zone, we dropped the gear and started shooting. Steve used the Dinner Platter of Justice and cleared out about four Nazis at once, and DumDum got the worlds unluckiest Nazi with his knife. Poor guy. There’s not a whole lot worse than your last sight on earth being a naked DumDum Dougan.

We’d unintentionally provided a perfect distraction, and the transport had time to regroup and return fire. Between us, the ambush was taken care of in a few minutes. 

But the thing was, we’d broken protocol by stopping to wash up, and as a shiny new unit still on probation, the last thing we wanted was to tell anyone what had actually happened. 

So instead we told them that we’d known about the ambush and had decided to provide a distraction, and were just crazy enough that we thought the best way to do that was run howling straight into it. DumDum’s nudity was explained as a personal preference: _the man just likes fighting Nazis naked, sir, and you cant say it wasn't effective??_

Naturally, the story went everywhere and got bigger each time it was told. Probably we should have gotten in tons of trouble, but the story was such a morale booster that they let it slide. 

And that's why we were called the Howling Commandos. 

 


	10. Small but Full of Rage (and diseases)

 

_Anonymous  asked: _ _Bucky, can you tell us about one of the times you had to take care of poor, sick, pre-serum Steve? I'm fighting off the last of a virus and could use a good story._

  
Look, you guys. I dunno what the hell kinda history books you've been reading about pre-serum Steve, but ‘poor sick’ Steve was pretty much the literal devil.

I am not joking. He was pretty much the definition of ‘lead you right into temptation’ if you assume that what you're being tempted to do is get in so many fistfights. 

So. Many. I coulda really used a sickass robot arm back in the day, because my goodness did I do a lotta punching.

Anyway, sick Steve went through four stages, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, except he turned from a tiny angry man with the ability to breathe into a tiny angry man with the ability to pass out with zero warning. Stage one was called "I'm Not Sick, I Always Breathe Like This," and did indeed involve Steve wheezing a lot. Usually that was the first sign. But tiny Steve had asthma, so sometimes he really did just breathe like that. At this stage, Steve would insist that he was "Fine, Bucky, honestly stop glaring at my lungs. You can't even see them."

The second stage was called "So Maybe I Might Be Sick But I'm Still Fine Though," and pretty much came into play when Steve stopped being able to get a whole word out without gasping in the middle. Fun fact? Steve’s eyebrows did not grow when he got the super serum, so if you think his angry face is bad now, just imagine allll that scowl packed into Steve’s itty bitty please-punch-me starter face.

Stage three was "If I'm Dying I'm Gonna Go Out The Way I Came In, Screaming And Covered In Blood," which was the stage where Steve, despite the fact that he was supposed to be in bed, would try to sneak out and go do things. This wouldn't be so bad if 1. he wasn't prone to just suddenly passing out when he was sick, or 2. had had any control at all over what came out of his mouth. That thing Steve does where if you're doing something he objects to morally, he will 100% of the time come over and inform you that you should be expecting a punch in the near future? Yeah. Tiny Steve did that too. Luckily, his brain-to-mouth filter was improved by the serum, or I'm pretty sure he’d have started fights with a lot more than 117 countries and literally every Nazi ever. Anyways, he’d try and sneak out, and if he succeeded, he would almost always wind up picking a fight with somebody, because having bad luck and terrible impulse control is what Steve do.

The final stage was called "Bucky I Promise I Won't Do Anything Stupid, Please Stop Sitting On Me," and it was the point at which I started ignoring everything he said until he could say a whole sentence in one breath. 


	11. #JustSniperThings

_A nonymous asked:  Did the fact that half the Howling Commandos were named James ever make things confusing?_

  
 Yeah, half the Howlies and half the English-speaking world, it felt like, because James was a really really popular name. I mean, Jim and Jacques both were already going by non-James versions so…

Did you think i just like….woke up one day and thought to myself, "Yeah, Bucky is a great and not at ALL ridiculous name for a grown-ass man who fights Nazis and definitely doesn't deserve to be given a wedgie" ??? No. Oh no my friend. I am Bucky Barnes out of necessity, and in hopes of staving off an even worse nickname.

I knew so many Jameses and Jims and Jimmys and whatevers it wasn't even funny. Do you know how many ‘James Smiths’ were in the 107th alone?? Six. And each and every one of those suckers had an embarrassing nickname, except for James-With-The-Grenades, for pretty obvious reasons.

Nobody messed with James-With-The-Grenades. 

* * *

 

 

_Anonymous  asked: So when you say all's fair in love and prank wars except live spiders, I'm guessing someone has used live spiders against you before? Was Steve salty because he was losing?_

Look. Buddy. 

Between Captain America, Black Widow, and Spiderman, who the heck do you think is deploying live arachnids in a prank war??? It sure isn't Steven ‘My superpower is breaking mirrors with my high-pitched screamin’ Rogers, who can fight Nazis but not the tiny clump of hair he thought was a spider in the shower.

* * *

_A nonymous asked: My friend does not believe me that ppl who judge dog shows are heartless (they get to pet SO MANY DOGS and they tell most of them that they're not the best dog ever) thoughts? _

To keep myself from having to personally hunt down and assassinate every dog show judge, I will offer this rationale: they are not deciding which dog is BEST, they are deciding which dog is MOST DOG. IE. it is not that you are not the best dog, it is simply that you are not as perfect an embodiment of a Jack Russel Terrier as this other dog. But still a very good dog. 

Please don't make me hunt down all the dog show guys. I already have my hands so full of evil scientists and robots and fucking Nazis again. 

Every dog is the best dog. Except that one jerk who stole my whole lunch in Central Park last summer. That jerk sucks. I waited in line for like an hour for that sandwich you little thief, it was gonna be so good and you didn't even eat it, you ran straight into a pond with it--

* * *

  _A nonymous asked: The world's greatest assassin got outsmarted and had his lunch stolen by a dog?_

It was a cute dog, I was led on. And I kinda let him do it. What else was I supposed to do?? punch him?? I'm a mass murderer, not a monster.

* * *

_[kahuna-burger](http://kahuna-burger.tumblr.com/) asked: Hey, since you have trouble touching people without stabbing them, but like cuddling pets, have you considered trying to hug T'Challa? Or possibly getting Tony to put on cat ears?_

 

You have a serious flaw in your logic. 

T'Challa is a cat-man who has repeatedly tried to claw my face off. It was freakin' traumatizing. You think a normal cat that doesn't wanna be petted is bad, try getting handsy with T'Challa.

Not that I've gotten handsy with T'Challa. I like my face attached to my person, thank you very much.

Tony put on cat ears a few months ago in a fit of confused sleep deprivation. The picture circulated through Avengers-related group chats for weeks. Nick Fury called it, and I quote, ‘fucking adorable.’ Tony is sometimes a no-toucher too, though, so mostly we let him initiate contract when he wants to. So no, I did not hug Tony when he was wearing cat ears. 

Steve did have to carry him to bed though. And that picture circulated for _months._

* * *

_Anonymous  asked: Ever fall asleep in a tree when you were a sniper during WWII?_

 

Nope.

Trees are actually terrible perches for snipers. Ideally, when you're sniping, you take a shot or two and then displace before someone figures out where you are. An ideal sniper perch is stable, gives you good lines of sight, offers cover from return fire, and lets you bug out quick when you need to. Trees don't really do any of those things. I used them a few times when they were the best option available, but those were pretty unusual occasions. 

And ironically for a guy who's slept through several decades, I'm actually really good at staying awake when I need to. Even in uncomfortable places. Honestly though, the worst part about sniping was breaking in the Howlies.

See, once we got to know each other, the Howlies were an extremely close unit. I mean, most units had that whole brothers-in-arms thing going on, but the Howlies all lived in each other’s back pockets. We spent almost all our time together, even on leave, and it rapidly reached a point where our teamwork was so smooth that we could nearly sense where everyone else was when we were in the field.

Mostly that was helpful. However, the Howlies were also remarkably dumb at times, and had a tendency to give away my goddam position without thinking about it. The whole point of sniping is that you're relatively safe from return fire because no one knows where you are. Which doesn't work when your fuckIN TEAMMATE TURNS AROUND AND SALUTES YOU AFTER A GOOD SHOT.  
THANKS STEVE.

* * *

   _Bucky, I totally get the no hugging thing. Getting hugged makes me want to punch the hugger (most of the time; it's complicated; fucking sensory processing issues). People seem to figure out pretty fast that you don't do hugs. How would you recommend telegraphing an aversion to hugs, extended handshakes, arm pats, back pats, etc. to those around you, especially those who don't know you that well, for someone small, female, and (apparently) cute?_

 

Have you ever tried to pet a cat that didn't want to be petted? You have your hand directly over their spine, and as you lower it they just turn into a liquid and slide away, and you wind up petting the floor where they were. Learn from the cats. 

To begin with, stand just outside easy arm’s reach with new people. It will make you seem a bit standoffish but will also make it take an awkward amount of effort to pat your shoulder or grab your arm. You can compensate for the physical distance by being actively engaged in the conversation, which I rarely bother with.  In social situations, find things to hold: a drink of some kind, your phone or wallet in the other hand, which means you don't have any hands free for hugs or handshakes. Make the ‘sorry, can't, my hands are full’ shrug and smile when necessary. (Or, if you are me, stare people dead in the eyes and scowl. That’s pretty effective.)  Wear layers; distance the touch from your skin. With handshakes, having a limp grip is your enemy; instead, do a simple firm clasp and then release. Usually people will get a ‘handshake over’ vibe easily after a you loosen, but if you’re limp-gripped the whole time, there’s no end signal.  And most people will get it–girls especially–if you just tell them you're not a big toucher. If you're down to give a white lie or two, say you’re getting over a cold and don't want to spread germs. 

When someone goes for a hug, close your body language; shoulders drawn up and head tilted down, hands close in towards center mass and elbows out, widening and sharpening your profile. This is the ‘I'm solid and pointy, don't grab me’ shape. Add in widened eyes and a bit of a lean backwards and most people will get the idea that you do not want to be grabbed. Feel free to say ‘sorry, not a hugger,’ if necessary, and possibly offer an alternative that you’re more comfortable with. People usually respond well to humorously-delivered overly-serious options like, ‘can we exchange Dignified Buisnessman Nods instead?’ or ‘the high-five of the emotionally stunted?’ This is a Clint technique, and he rocks it when hes not feeling like being handsy with people. I just stick with my usual scowl and glare. As long as you make it clear that you don't dislike them, and aren't trying to snub them, people tend to roll with alternative options. 

If they're not okay with it or don't get the hint, find other people to hang out with. 

* * *

  _[aint-nothing-but-a-drifter](http://aint-nothing-but-a-drifter.tumblr.com/) asked: _ _Hey Bucky! I love reading about your perspective on life. I was wondering, have you bonded with Tony over non-consensual body modifications? And, has he/does he help out at all with the technical support of your arm?_

Tony and i have talked about our super fun experiences with becoming cyborgs, yes, and I guess we bonded? honestly though Tony and I spend a lot of time geeking out about science and engineering. I'm nowhere near his level, but when he's stumbled across something that really gets him excited he likes to share it with anyone who will listen, and I'm one of the few people in the tower who is genuinely interested in that stuff. Bruce is too, but his interests are more focused. So often Tony will just burst into whatever room I'm hanging out in and begin ranting about whatever neat science thing has happened. Often he is still smoking from whatever explosion he just accidentally set off. 

Tony and I mostly bond over cars. Both of us are gearheads and we spend a lot of time working on the cars Tony already has, or just chatting about cars in general. Natasha joins us a lot too, believe it or not. She has strong opinions about cars, both as accessories for her various covers, and as getaway vehicles. Eventually I think it just kinda turned into an actual interest in cars. So she and Tony and I argue cars a lot, because the rest of the Avengers couldn't care less. Clint drives an ancient pickup truck that is probably more bullet holes than steel, Thor is half convinced that every car is gonna hit him ( and to be fair to Thor, he's been hit by cars a lot), Bruce just drives whatever, and Steve seems to think that cars are some sort of range weapon. 

Tony does do my arm maintenance. Last time my arm broke it was because he summoned the Iron Man armor across the city while I was stuffing the insides full of glitter. It broke all of my metal fingers. Tony fixed them all except my middle finger, which is currently stuck in flipping-off position. Doesn't bother me much though, because I do that a lot anyway.

* * *

 A _nonymous  asked: Opinion on Parker?_

 The bitsy spider is like… a mildly terrifying combo of Steve and Tony. He has all of Steve’s moral uprightness and willingness to do what he believes is right, regardless of consequences, and all of Tony’s I-will-do-science-and-thereby-solve-my-problems method of dealing with life. He’s good people though, despite an unfortunate tendency to eat pizza while sitting on the ceiling and drip hot cheese into my hair. Not cool, Peterbird.

What makes him kinda terrifying is that he physically looks like Steve did pre-superjuice, plus a few inches and a few pounds, but he’s crazy strong. The only Avengers who can beat him in sheer strength are Hulk and Thor. And neither of them really have a calculable upper limit on their strength, so.

But being able to kick both Stevie and I across the room doesn't stop him from looking like he needs to be bundled in blankets and tucked in a corner where nobody can bully him. Lemmie tell you, it plays merry hell on my nerves when somebody throws a bus at him and he _catches it and throws it back._

* * *

_Anonymous  asked: Bucky! What would you do if I told you that Steve was de-aged by a rogue science experiment and was little 'n fragile but still as reckless as ever?_

 Start drinking & schedule more therapy.

 


	12. Mr. Davies & Thunderhead

_Anonymous  asked:  You have the BEST stories! Can you tell me a bedtime story?_

  
  I will tell you a story, friends, and probably you will regret asking me to do so, because its not really a very restful story. I….don't really have any of those.

  
This is the story of how Steve and a horse almost gave me a heart attack.  
  


Back when I was a kid, cars were a thing that existed but were mostly really really expensive, so horses were still a common sight on the streets of Brooklyn. Most of these horses were exceedingly large, calm animals; they hauled around big carts of stuff on crowded streets. Back then, milk was delivered to your doorstep by a milkman. The milkman who worked our block was Mr. Davies, and he was this very nice older black gentleman. I mention that he’s black because racism was Very Much A Thing (oh how times have changed). Mr. Davies always had peppermint candies in his pockets to give to Thunderhead, his horse, and he would always give one to Stevie and me if he saw us. So Stevie loved Mr. Davies, and if anyone was being disrespectful towards him because he was black, Stevie would pretty much blow his top. Mr. Davies loved Steve for it, of course. but since Mr. Davies didn't want to get Steve in trouble, he’d usually whistle me over (if I wasn't already there) to haul Steve off before he did something drastic. Mr. Davies was great like that. 

Anyway, Mr. Davies was around every morning dropping off milk with Thunderhead. Thunderhead was this huge dapple grey horse, i think a Percheron?? A big draft horse, with hooves about the size of a dinner plate. Aside from her size, her name was probably the most intimidating thing about her, because she was the most mild-mannered horse I've ever met. She would let all the little neighborhood kids climb all over her, and Mr. Davies would usually let two or three of us ride on her back down the street. She never really noticed the extra weight. I think that if Mr. Davies ever slept in, Thunderhead would go walk his route without him. She loved Stevie too–but for very different reasons. Steve’s hair apparently looked exactly like hay to her, so she’d wander over and start lipping the top of his head. She never nipped or anything, but Steve always got amusingly flaily when she did it, and I always suspected she thought it was funny.

One boiling hot summer morning, Steve and I were sitting on the front steps of our building, just wasting time. It was early, but already awfully hot out, so when Mr. Davies rounded the corner, Steve decided to go meet him, but I stayed on the steps. It was hot. I didn't wanna move. 

Anyway, Steve went trotting down the block, said hi to old Mrs. McKinnon, who was on her way to get groceries, and was about a hundred feet away from Mr. Davies and Thunderhead when the wind picked up. It was a very nice refreshingly cool breeze, which picked up some of the debris–old newspapers and leaves and such–hanging around and tossed it across the road. 

Now, if you know horses, you know that sometimes they get terrified by utterly ridiculous things. I'm told many horses nowadays think plastic bags are the minions of evil, and horses back then were much the same. I'd never seen Thunderhead scared before, but I guess a bit of newspaper whipped in front of her and was the spitting image of Pony Satan himself, because her eyes went white around the edges and she took off running. Mr. Davies was around back of the cart, getting milk out, so there was nobody at the reins to stop her. She went tearing down the block, the cart bouncing along behind, like there was a pack of slavering borzoi chasing after. And of course she was headed right at Steve and old Mrs. McKinnon. 

Steve, being the brave little idiot he was, didn't run; old Mrs. McKinnon wouldn't be able to get out of the way in time, so he stood his ground, flung his arms out, and waited to get trampled by a rogue milk cart. All of us there thought we were gonna be scraping tiny blonde guy off the pavement, because Thunderhead just kept going. 

But about ten feet away from Steve, Thunderhead must have recognized him, because she went to a screeching stop. Four feet down, all her knees locked, skiddin' on the cobblestones. Normally, she’d probably have been able to stop in that distance, but she was still harnessed to that heavy milk cart, so instead she plowed right into Stevie, chest first. 

He went _flying_. He must've gone about six feet through the air, and he hit the ground and just laid there like a sack of really dead potatoes. I thought he must have broken his little toothpick spine. Poor Thunderhead looked just as scared as I was, because she got her feet back under her and crept up on him like the cart wasn't jangling right behind her. She dropped her nose down and started whuffing and lipping at his hair, and he popped up like a damn weasel. Little moron was fine. He nearly gave me and Mr. Davies and old Mrs. McKinnon and Thunderhead all a heart attack, but he was fine. 

And Mr. Davies gave him his whole bag of peppermints, and Mrs. McKinnon gave him a chocolate, so he didn't even learn to not do stupid shit like that.


	13. Stealthy, Not Smart

_[they-told-me-be-seen-not-heard](http://they-told-me-be-seen-not-heard.tumblr.com/) asked: I would kill for more howlie stories. Particularly the one where everyone dressed up as women. Please? I have coffee, bacon, and a genuine grenade (not sure if it still works) from 1942. (Ps pls embarass the golden retriever known as the Star Spangled Man as much as you can. It's funny.)_

Well, us Howlies were willing to do downright stupid stuff for even stupider reasons, so it never took much effort to talk everybody into doing something really really dumb. Usually I was the one trying to keep everyone for getting their stupid selves killed, but I'm proud to say that this particular occasion was all my doing.

So, it's July 1944, and Nazis are still occupying Paris. We were sent in to pick up some crucial info from a resistance informer in the heart of the city. But at this point we were already starting to be recognizable, so we needed to disguise ourselves to get through the city. The higher-ups hadn't been specific on how exactly to conduct this particular op, so, left to our own devices, we naturally concluded that we should dress one of the most overmuscled commando squads in the allied forces as women. 

We were good at special ops, not logic.

I think whoever suggested it was joking, but in typical Howlies fashion, we took things waaay to far, and soon enough we were sourcing dresses and wigs. Dum Dum and Pinky and Gabe and Jaques and Falsworth and Morita had to shave their mustaches off. Dum Dum cried. 

Morita managed to get his hands on some makeup–he refused to tell us where from–which was great, until we realized that none of us had any idea what to do with it. But then Steve admitted what exactly he’d been up to with the ladies of the Star Spangled Show. Turns out that aside from hauling their luggage everwhere, he’d also been on hair-and-makeup duty nearly every night. I guess the ladies decided to put his artistic skills to use, because the man knew his way around a blush brush. (The rest of us were not sure what a blush brush was.)  Even in 2017, he can still do a contour like nobody's business, because he apparently decided that was something worth knowing. So Steve did our makeup, and all of us learned how to do lipstick. More useful combat skills for the Howlies dossiers. 

Falsworth had a friend who ran a really fantastic underground drag show, so he negotiated wigs in return for promising to send Steve over to help with a show sometime. We did not tell Steve about that promise until later.  Gabe found the dresses, and I don't know where he got them, because they were somehow big enough for us. 

Except for Steve, who has the waist-to-shoulder proportions of a pizza slice. He got stuck halfway into a dress – caught with one arm in, his head and other arm out – with his fully-made-up face slowly turning redder and redder. All of us tried, but we could not wedge Steve into that dress. 

So instead we put him into a wheelbarrow full of garbage. 

The rest of us – the worlds burliest but most well-made-up ladies – set off in groups of twos and threes through occupied Paris. Happy Sam pulled the short straw and had to wheel along the Stevebarrow, which not only stunk but was heavy as hell. The Nazis working the checkpoints must have liked their ladies large and muscular, because we made it through to the drop point with no problems, aside from Falsworth getting a little to invested in the flirting. Steve kept griping, but we kept telling him _garbage is quiet Steve, shut up_.

We made it to the drop point, this big old house on  Rue des Grands Augustins, one of those huge mansions. But what we’d carefully avoided telling Steve was who exactly the house belonged to, because his birthday was the next day, and this – aside from being a crucial intelligence mission – was his birthday present.

The house belonged to Pablo Picasso.

So we all slipped in through a side door, and when Happy Sam and the Stevebarrow finally caught up with the rest of us, Happy Sam turned it over sideways and out tumbled a very irate, still made-up Steve in his Captain America costume. 

He was pissed as hell until he realized who exactly the weird little guy covered in paint was, and then he blushed so red I thought he’d cook the makeup right off his face, and he started stammering like that time in first grade Suzy Miller said he was cute.

Anyway, he and Picasso got along like a house on fire, and the rest of us enjoyed some proper french cooking while they babbled art at each other and scribbled in each other’s sketchbooks. Picasso drew Steve a portrait of himself, which is why one of Steve’s battered stained sketchbooks is valued at 700 thousand dollars. It’s because halfway through there's a bunch of Picasso sketches, and a little painting of Captain America wearing makeup in a heap of garbage.

Not that you can really tell, of course. Cubism. 

* * *

 

 

 

_Anonymous  asked: _ _I imagine you're the kind of person who accidentally falls asleep sitting up._

Well, not accidentally. Falling asleep upright is kinda uncomfortable. I mean, I still do it, but usually it has to be a special occasion. Or I have to be really really bored.

 Last week I fell asleep sitting up with my eyes open and accidentally won a staring contest with Nick Fury. So there's that, I guess.

* * *

 

 

 

_Anonymous  asked: _ _How many pairs of crocs do you own, and do you have a charm for all ur buds?_

One time when they woke me up in the 2000s, all the Hydra cryo-medical techs were wearing crocs. One of them had an octopus charm on his left foot.

This should tell you everything you need to know about both Hydra and crocs.

* * *

 

_Anonymous  asked: _ _How many vehicles has Steve wrecked and did this pattern start before he got the serum or after?_

Thankfully, he only really started wrecking stuff properly after the serum. He’s always been really good at using his surroundings to his advantage in a fight, and he had surprisingly good spatial awareness for a half-deaf colorblind guy.  Which was good because he had pretty much nothing but that and pure bullheadedness going for him when it came to actual fisticuffs. Well, that and me. I was usually there to fish him out before things got too nasty. He always hated that. 

Plus, Steve’s fights when he was still a brave little toaster and not a brave industrial refrigerator were mostly backalley fistfights, and therefore rarely merited the throw-a-motorcycle-at-it method of conflict resolution. 

But after? I have no idea how many vehicles he’s wrecked. I'm told that one of the first things he did was rip a door off a taxicab to use as a shield, which, typical. And then he was hoisting aloft motorcycles loaded with ladies in the Star Spangled Show, and I've got no clue what happened with that. During the war he went through six or so bikes, and if you wanna count enemy vehicles, it seemed like we were blowing up or stealing somebody’s ride every other week at least. 

And it seems that the future has not slowed him down on that front. From what I've heard and seen, he’s continued his one man war on all things horsepowered. 

Frankly at this point he’s probably killed as many vehicles as I have people. 

 


	14. The Chicken Incident, Stuttering, And Really Bad Days

_ Anonymous asked: Steve mentioned that he once lost a fight with a chicken back in the '40s, and that there were "extenuating circumstances". Could a homemade blueberry pie convince you to share that story? Because I will absolutely make a pie for you in return for more information about Steve vs. Chicken. _

 

You’re like the fourth person to ask about the tale of Steve And The Chicken, so, despite the blood oath  swore, I will tell the tale. 

It turns out that I like pie better than I like keeping blood oaths. 

Steve will insist that he didn’t ‘lose’ the fight, but as me, the Howlies, and one poor Austrian milkmaid can attest, he totally lost a fight with a chicken. 

As many of my stories go, the Howlies and I were running ops behind enemy lines in German territory. We did that a lot. For a bunch of really unsubtle guys, we did a ton of covert action. Anyways, we were trying to get to a rendezvous point that was sort of in the middle of some farmland. The problem with that is that farmland tends, by nature, to be pretty open, and we were pretty unsubtle guys (see above). So we were as disguised as a multinational commando squad armed to the teeth could be. But rural Austria was not exactly known for its cultural diversity, and no matter how they dressed, our non-white squadmates kinda stood out. That being the case, we tended to sort of…lurk as much as we could manage, in hopes that nobody would see us at all, and if we heard somebody coming before they saw us, we’d all just hide till they passed by.

The way I'm describing this sounds really not very badass at all. But it was. Trust me, I swear, we were badass. 

Well. Steve wasn’t. Not this time, anyway. 

So we were crossing some back farm yard when we head somebody coming, and we all dove for cover. Luckily, there were a whole bunch of outbuildings to hide in, so there were lots of options. Me and the rest of the Howlies took cover in what I assume was some sort of shedlike shelter for the cows, and Steve dived into this tiny little red barn thing. 

Steve and I were from Brooklyn. Neither of us had any idea what a proper chicken coop looked like. 

We hunkered down and waited for the person to pass, and just as it sounded like they were nearby and all of us were getting nervous, the chicken coop exploded open. 

Out tumbled Steve, a rooster, a dozen chickens, and the fattest, angriest bird I’ve ever met. And I'm including both Clint and Sam. 

All the chickens were squawking. Steve was yelling. The person–a milkmaid–is screaming, because a huge blonde dude just busted out of her chicken coop and appeared to be going crazy.

Steve insists that when he dove into the coop, he hadn’t realized there was livestock inside, so when something suddenly jumped on top of him, he’d startled, and jumped right out the door. The chicken on top of him had not appreciated that. 

You might think chickens are dumb. They are. They have tiny little brains and big feathery bodies, but it turns out that being dumb as a rock makes you  _ completely fearless. _ (I would say that that sounds remarkably like Steve, but he knows where I sleep and I'm gonna be in enough trouble for telling this story.) Steve and the chickens came out of the coop and that fat hen went right for Steve’s eyes. And he can punch his way out of almost anything, but it turns out that ten pounds of furious chicken to the face will take out even Captain America. He went down screaming and flailing, and landed directly in a fresh pile of cow manure. The world’s angriest little dino went with him, pecking all the way. 

Then she pooped right on the star on the front of his uniform and wandered off,  having achieved victory where the entire German army failed. 

The poop was the final blow. Steve just laid there, completely defeated. Gabe went over to the milkmaid and explained things, which went well, because–like the rest of us–she was laughing at Steve. And it turned out that she’d had her Jewish neighbors hidden in her hayloft for three months.

The op was time-sensitive, so Steve had to run the rest of the mission wearing the shame of chicken poop on his front side and cow poop on his back. Strong and brave and here to save the American way, everyone. Provided the enemy doesn’t have any chickens.

Frankly I'm shocked that I'm the only Howlie who died during that war.

* * *

 

_ anonymous asked: There is a guy in my English class that like to be an asshole and laugh whenever I have to read out loud in class(I stutter and am slow when reading aloud). What do you suggest I do to make him cut it out? _

Stop trying to read as soon as he starts laughing. Make direct eye contact and stare him down until he stops. Don’t act apologetic. Start reading again. Repeat.

Alternatively, get dosed with superjuice so you’re six feet tall and terrifying. Downside is that the superjuice only works right if you have the personality of an overgrown dog. 

Whichever works for you.

* * *

 

_ anonymous asked:  _ _ Hey uhh... I don't wanna bother you...but... is it bad that I want to live despite not being worthy of living? I feel like I'm dying inside and I shouldn't be. I have an ok job,my family love me, and I have good friends... So why do I feel like if I died everyone would be happier without me? I've tried to find ways to "leave" but whenever I do I get scared and back down,then I yell at myself for being selfish for wanting to live. _

No, buddy, that's not bad at all. That's a good thing. Hang on to that. 

Somebody once said that where there’s life, there’s hope, and they were right. As bad and awful as things feel and actually are sometimes, as long as you’re alive there’s opportunity to get better, to be better. If you’re dead, there’s not. Sometimes there’s no explanation for feeling like garbage, you just do, and it sucks. 

I had an interesting discussion the other week with my therapist about being defined by what I do, not how I feel about myself. we talked about how it can be helpful to use the choices that you make to help define what kind of person you are. If you’re a person who thinks you’re bad, but who does good things, are you bad or good? Externally, you’re a positive force in the world. Thinking of the ways that I can and have improved the lives of the people important to me helps me fight that nasty voice that tells me the world would be better without me. (And being helpful to them makes me feel like less of a burden when I have to ask them for help. Which isn’t a burden, really, but it makes me feel better about asking.)

And if there’s anything I know, it’s that not having something you love never makes you happier than when you do have it. If your family loves you, they won’t be happier without you. 

Hold on to that strong, surviving part of yourself. Feed it with good stuff. That’s how you can make it through to a better mental place. If you give in to the nasty, you’ll never make it to the nice. Living is  _ never  _ selfish. 

Man, this got a little heavy, sorry. I didn’t want to leave it unanswered, though, so here we are.  On a much lighter note, today I watched Thor accidentally set a car down on his own foot, and I learned a bunch of swear words in Asgardian. Sometimes it’s the little stuff that makes me glad i’m still here, living life. 

  
  
  



	15. Pretzels, Dancing, Australia, and Revenge.

 

_O[hsweetcrepes ](http://ohsweetcrepes.tumblr.com/) asked: ... honestly, now I want to know what Steve did as revenge for you breaking a blood oath about that (admittedly hilarious) story. God, so chickens really do react like the ones in legend of zelda. _

What? Oh, the blood oath wasnt to Steve. The blood oath was to Gabe Jones, for sole rights to tell the Steve And The Chicken story. All us Howlies loved telling it, so whenever it came up, we’d all talk over each other trying to tell it, and ruin it for everyone. So eventually we held a poker tournament to determine who got to tell it, and Gabe won. And he made the rest of us swear blood oaths to never tell it, because he was the only one allowed to.

But dead men tell no tales, so I gotta do it instead. Steve just hates that story though, so he short-sheeted my bed in revenge.

Nerd.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: What happened in Australia?_

The important thing to remember about Australia is that We Were Never In Australia.

no, really. We weren’t, we swear.

Peggy Carter owes me a drink for telling this story.

See, the Howlies operated mostly on the western front of WWII, and we were quite successful there, despite all logic and good sense. And, since we were headed up by the famous Captain America, and we were the first integrated American unit, there was a fair amount of press about us. So we had a lot more say in our missions than the average unit, which was why, when we got intel on a Hydra operation trying to smuggle some sort of superweapon into Australia, we got to go after them ourselves, instead of just sending someone more local. We sent word ahead on what was up, packed our gear and took a flight to the port.

Due to reasons that were never really clear to us, we wound up on a ship to Australia instead of a plane, so getting there took quite a while. The ship was Aussie-operated, a really great bunch of guys. But the thing about sea voyages? There’s not a lot to do if you’re a passenger. Cap kept us all in shape, and we played a lot of cards, but often we would hang out with the crew on their off hours just to kill time, which was fun for everyone. And with the chain of command being a bit strange, we wound up spending a fair bit of time with the captain and his XO. It was a cargo ship, so things weren’t quite as uptight as they might have been on a battleship.

Anyway, by the time we made it to Australia, we were good friends with nearly everyone on that ship. Which says a lot about the kind of people they were, because the sort of people who get along with the Howlies are rarely very sane.

One of the great mottos of military life is ‘hurry up and wait,’ which was very much the case when we made port in Australia.There was some sort of backup with harbor authorities, so we wound up docking but had to stay shipboard until the intel officer we were supposed to meet came around with the harbormaster. It was going to be a three hour wait, they told us, so we would up hanging around on the deck, killing time.

The captain, it turned out, was sweet on a waitress who worked at a local pub, and we’d spent a fair amount of time talking to him about his lack of luck with her. As we waited, he mentioned that she was a lovely dancer but he had two left feet, which hadn’t done him any favors with her.

So, naturally, being the three-time Brooklyn swing champ that I was, I offered to give him a dance lesson.

Picture, if you will, the sort of sea captain one imagines with a grizzled face and salty beard, roughly the size of a mountain. That was Captain Lee. He was actually bigger than Steve, so he could take lead with me and not have it be too awkward, size-wise. And you don't get to be a swing champ without learning both men’s and ladies’ steps, so I had no problem following instead of leading. I roped DumDum and Falsworth into helping as well, since it was useful to be able to show him someone else doing the steps. We’d gotten him through the basic step, a few passes, and were working on aerials and drops – specifically, the sidecar, which is a complicated lift that I really shouldn’t have been teaching to a beginner. I'm told that you can google that if you want to know what it looks like, since its a little hard to describe.

The last lift in the sidecar is an almost-vertical handstand-like upwards swing, and, since I was being the girl, meant that I had to trust Captain Lee to catch me if we messed up, which, of course, we did.

Lee had me upside down at head height, but he released unevenly, and I was coming down sideways instead of vertically. Luckily, he managed to catch me over his leg before I hit ground, in what was accidentally sort of a classic princess dip. Being a dramatic sort of bastard, I popped a leg and threw my head back, and Lee acted like we’d done it on purpose.

And then we all noticed the harbormaster and the intel officer, who’d turned up nearly an hour earlier than they’d said. We’d been so caught up dancing that we hadn’t heard them board, and most everyone else was watching the show.

They were not amused. The intel guy seemed annoyed, but the harbormaster took one look at us – big, burly, manly Captain Lee with my not-so-tiny self draped across him like a fainting lady – and he just said, “NO.”

And that was that.  They didn’t even let us off the ship.  It turns out the intel guy was there to tell us that they’d already caught the Hydra op and we weren’t needed, so we just went back to France. We never set foot off the boat. And from what I’ve heard of australian spiders, I'm okay with that.

So no, really, We Were Never In Australia.

* * *

 

 _A_ [ _rtemisgarden_ ](http://artemisgarden.tumblr.com/) _asked: Hi Bucky! I've seen a few other stories of how you met some Avengers. I'd love to hear about the first time you met Dr. Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis. Does Thor really like to tell people about Darcy tazing him the first time they met?_

Well, I actually first met Doc Jane while Thor was in Asgard, so he wasn’t around. From his stories, I expected the Doc to be ten feet tall and smarter than Tony and Dr. Banner combined, so when she turned out to be the size of little Steve I was a bit surprised. Pretty much as smart as advertised though.

Lewis and I get along like a house on fire. Both of us suffer from terminal My Best Friend Keeps Wanting To Fight Aliens syndrome, so we have a lot in common. Plus she’s a dang good dancer. We’re learning salsa together. And one time she went out of her way to rescue a puppy from a giant killer alien robot, so I have tons of respect for her.

Lewis told me right out of the gate that she’d tazed Thor, but refused to tell the story, since apparently only Thor himself can do it justice, and he only gets in a proper tale-telling mood after a huge meal and a bit of Asgardian mead. And when I say huge, I mean by his standards. If you can get him to do it, he really does tell it right, in proper Norse epic style.

* * *

 

 _Anonymous said to_ [ _buckykingofmemes_ ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/) _: Ok but talking about salsa and swing I gotta ask if Steve’s done any dance sketches, it is in my contract as a social dance nerd_

 _There is art which accompanies this ask, which you can find_ [ _HERE_ ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/post/158156367746/anonymous-said-to-buckykingofmemes-ok-but-talking) _._

__

Steve actually has a ton of dance sketches. He used to come with me when I wanted to go dancing and use it as life drawing practice. Said it helped him get the unusual poses better.

Anyway, this sketch  is a really old one, from back before the war. that lovely lady I'm dancing with is my baby sister Becca. Becca and I used to do swing competitions together, and we were an unstoppable team, since we’d been dancing together since before she could walk. We danced with other people a lot, but when it came to competitions Becca and I were pure magic. I was a pretty big guy and she was always tiny, so I could whip her through steps and lifts like lightning. And she always trusted me to catch her, since I'd been tossing her in the air for as long as she could remember, and never once let her drop. The two of us would invent lifts nobody else in Brooklyn would dare to try.

Sometimes we roped Stevie into helping, because he wasn’t much bigger than Becca, and we didn’t have mirrors to practice with. So if we wanted to see how a move looked, we’d teach Stevie Becca’s lift and she’d watch and figure out what needed changing. Steve had no rhythm at all, but he was usually game for the lifts. Later, in the Star Spangled Show, they tried to make use of some of those, but he still didn’t have the steps down, so it never worked out.

After I got drafted, Becca kept dancing. By the time she was thirty, she held the title of Brooklyn’s longest-running swing queen, with fifteen consecutive wins.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: What's your favorite recipe?_

Not combat rations, thats for sure. I’ve had enough of those for a lifetime.

But my latest food hit has been pretzel bites. Pretzels are an awesome food but rarely available fresh when I want to eat them, which is usually when I’ve woken up in the middle of the night. They’re relatively labor-intensive to make, which is good once the insomnia sets in. Keeps me busy. Plus, pretzels are sweet on the inside, salty on the outside, just like me. Except I'm also salty on the inside. Don't listen to Steve.

When I make pretzels, it’s by the metric ton, so the recipe I have makes approximately a million of them. Probably you will not want this many, because you don’t have Thor or Steve to help you eat them. or Clint. Probably you could just shove some into a vacuum cleaner instead, that’d be about the same. so divide the recipe in half or quarters for normal human consumption. Take 11 cups of flour, 1 cup of brown sugar, ½ cup of oil and mix. 4 cups of warm water gets 11 teaspoons of yeast and sits for a bit, then goes in the flour mix. Then mix it and let it rise for about an hour. The dough should be sticky to the touch and absolutely awful to get out of your metal fingers. While you wait, wander your living area for some poor sucker to rope into helping you, because stage 2 is easier with help. Or you can sit down and wonder why you talk yourself into doing things like this. Consider your choices. It’s already too late to go back to sleep; you’ve got dough rising.

Get a deep fry pan or sauce pan and fill with about two inches of water. Bring it to a rolling boil on the stove and add in three or so tablespoons of baking soda. You really can’t do too much of that, as long as the water’s not getting super cloudy. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Wake Steve up and tell him he has to help.

Get a couple egg yolks in a bowl with a basting brush, and find some kosher salt or sea salt. Grease up a few pans.

Flour a surface and roll the dough out until it’s between ½ and ¼ in thick. Get your poor unsuspecting minion to cut out bite sized bits. I use an inch and a half circle cookie cutter, but you can use whatever you want, really. Tony used a laser cutter last time I let him help, which was…not ideal.

Drop the cut outs into the boiling soda water, and let them sit for a few seconds, then fish them out. You can use your robot hand for that, but again, you’ll be getting dough out of it for days. I let them drip dry on a cookie drying sheet, but you could also drop them on a clean dishtowel I guess. You just don't want them to be wet when you put them on the cookie sheet.

They’re not gonna expand a ton, so just stuff em up close to each other on the sheet. Paint the tops with egg yolks and sprinkle with salt. pop em in the oven for 10-15 min or until golden brown.

Repeat the boiling-and-baking until you want to die, then keep going until you run out of dough. While the last batch is baking, take a half a stick of butter, a quarter cup of flour and make a roux in a saucepan. Add two cups of milk and two cups of cheddar cheese, some salt and pepper to taste, and a quarter cup of mustard, give or take. I'm showing you how much to use with my hands but you can't see it. Sorry, I don't really measure stuff most of the time. Heat and stir till it’s melty and amazing, and dip pretzels on in there.

By the time you have completed this process and eaten as many pretzel bites as you want – and there will be enough. It’s a dang big recipe – you will want to enter a food coma and sleep forever. Or for 70 years or so.

There. Insomnia fixed.

 

_(Mod note: A regular, human-sized batch of dough measurements is as follows:_

  _2 ¾ (ish) cups flour_

  _¼ cup brown sugar_

  _1/8 cup oil_

  _1 cup warm water_

  _3 teaspoons yeast_

_And just follow all other instructions as-is. Good luck!)_


	16. Drunk Steve, Airplanes, and Attacking the Wrong Base

_ Anonymous asked: I know Steve gets in a lot of dumb fights now, but what was the stupidest fight he got into pre-serum? _

We grew up mostly during the prohibition, when alcohol was illegal. I mean, it was still pretty easy to get your hands on some, because people like alcohol. But most of it tasted awful, because it was home-brewed to be as strong as possible. 

Anyway, Stevie and I got a bit of some really terrible hooch and squirreled ourselves away to get drunk. It took Steve about four drinks to be totally wasted, and it turns out Steve is a pretty entertaining drunk, with crazy fast mood swings and a tendency to want to touch things, just to see how they felt. He was wandering around the apartment trying to figure out if dark colors or light colors felt better, and he wanted to see if my hair–a nice dark color, versus his light blonde–felt nice. So I let him run his hand over the top of my head, and I was teasing him because he had all the fine motor control of a baby, so he’d made a mess of my hair. I think I said something like “My hair’s terrible now, Stevie, and now nobody’s gonna respect me,” and Steve went “NO!! you have nice hair Bucky your hair is GREAT it is SO GREAT.” Which was nice of him, because my hair really was a mess.

And then he punched me.

He punched me several times. 

Drunk Steve is not much of a brawler so he didn’t do much damage before I tipped him over and sat on him. It wasn't much of a fight. But if you’re looking for stupid, attacking me to defend my own hair is probably one for the history books.

Sometimes I miss wee Steve, because big Steve thinks my hair is ridiculous. I bet if tiny drunk Steve were around, he’d try and fight Captain America to defend my hair’s honor. Now that’d be a fight worth watching.

* * *

_ Anonymous asked: Do you change the Winter part of Winter Solider depending on the season or are just off duty during the other three seasons? _

Sam proposed that I be the summer tinker, fall tailor, winter soldier, and spring spy. I punched him. I have no idea what he was talking about, but I feel like he deserved it. 

He usually does.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Bucky, I'm guessing you fly a lot to missions and stuff and I have a 23 hour flight to New Zealand coming up. Any advice on how to not die of boredom? _

  1. Sleep 
  2. Sleep
  3. Read a book
  4. Read the briefing you were supplied with before takeoff, or you might ACCIDENTALLY CAPTURE THE WRONG BASE CLINT
  5. Bother the people sitting near you by singing dirty lyrics to songs they know and love, thereby ruining them forever
  6. Sleep
  7. No matter how bored you get, DO NOT JUMP OUT OF THE PLANE



* * *

 

[ _ buying-the-space-farm _ ](http://buying-the-space-farm.tumblr.com/) _ asked: "Accidentally capture the wrong base"? .....tell us more? Please? _

This was before we got Agent Agent back as our handler, and part of the reason why he finally turned up for work again. 

So the thing about Clint is that he’s 1. not a good listener and 2. he’s deaf. Mostly. These are separate issues because being mostly deaf doesn't stop him from understanding what people are saying most of the time, it just means that you have to be sure he knows you’re trying to communicate with him before you say something. (And also that you should make sure your mask doesn't cover your mouth so he can lipread, but whatever.)

We had this agent—incredibly boring guy in the worst sort of way–who’d requested Clint, Nat, and I for an op. Nat and I were supposed to hit two of the leaders of a crime syndicate while Clint got the third. Easy peasy, kill some guys, free some hostages, small country liberated, total cakewalk. But the agent running the op and the briefing took FOREVER. He was talking us through like none of us had ever overthrown a country before, explaining every minute detail. Nat and I could just kinda zone out and let things wash over us, picking up the pertinent details, but Clint can't really do that. His hearing aids help but they weren’t perfect, so he also had to be kinda lipreading just to keep up. Which takes a lot of focus for incredibly boring info. Naturally he zoned out too.

Which was how he missed the fact that his guy was not actually staying in his incredibly fortified base-slash-villa. His hostages were, but he wasn’t. 

Luckily, they covered this in the briefing packet we were each provided with, which was a mere 362 pages. 

So obviously none of us actually read it.

We poked through, got blueprints, guard schedules, alarm systems and so on, but didn’t bother with most of the rest of it. 

They dropped us in the air over each of our respective targets, Clint last. I had the cliffside resort, Nat had the downtown headquarters, and Clint had the base-villa. Nat and I handled ours like pros, of course, corpses everywhere, and Clint did too–mowed right through the security, got the hostages, and then called in that his syndicate leader wasn't there, _ what the hell, who gave me this bad intel. _

Which was when he was informed that the big bad wasn't IN the villa, he was on the ISLAND ACROSS from the villa, and that he’d been supposed to covertly infiltrate the beach house there and quietly capture him. Ideally without ever setting foot in the villa; he was just supposed to steal a boat from the villa docks and not get spotted by security. 

Unfortunately, Clint had blown up all the watercraft at the villa’s docks to keep syndicate members from escaping. Which meant he still had to get to the island and capture this guy, but now there were no motorboats left. And if this syndicate jerkoff got away, Fury was gonna have his  _ hide _ .

And that's how Clint wound up launching a one-man amphibious assault on an international crime syndicate from a paddleboat.

And also why Clint reads his briefings now.


	17. A Feel-Good Story

_ Hi, yeah, I usually don't send stuff, but I'm super down and turned all around because I didn't pass a test that would've gotten me a job that I really wanted. And I've been fighting for this job for a couple weeks now and I feel like I just let everyone down, but especially myself. So. If you could maybe tell me a cute story or just something so uplifting that would be great. Yeah. Thanks! By the way I fucking love your tumblr it makes me smile on my insides all gross-like and everything. _

Well, Tony was feeling really down last week because some huge asshole journalists wrote some garbage about him, and sometimes that sort of stuff gets to him. All of us were trying to cheer him up, but nothing was working.

And then two days later, at like 3 am, Jarvis alerted Tony and I--because we were both awake and in the kitchen--that Nat and Clint had gotten arrested and needed bail.

So naturally we went to go see what sort of trouble they’d gotten themselves into, because usually it's pretty entertaining.

We went to this precinct in Brooklyn and there they were, reeking of garbage, knuckles bloodied, and soaking wet--it had been raining--in one of the two little cells they had, and in the other were about twenty Russian mobsters, all of whom were injured. 

(Apparently they'd all insisted on being put in one cell because none of them wanted to be in a cell with Nat and Clint, who were too scary, I guess, and the cops thought it was funny so they went with it.)

Nat and Clint had run into a purse snatching on the way home and they'd stopped the guy doing it, only to find that he was trying to get together enough money to pay his crack dealer, who was threatening to blow out his kneecaps and kill his mom. So naturally they got the info for his dealer and tracked him down, and then followed him for a while, which led them to a human trafficking ring near the docks. They stashed the 'package' they'd been carrying somewhere they thought it would be safe, behind a dumpster. Not wanting to wait for the cops, they'd called it in but then busted everything up themselves. Two master assassins can take like a jillion mobsters, even if they aren't armed.

So they got the mobsters. then they went back to get the package only to find that the dumpster had been emptied, and the weirdly-thorough garbage man had also cleared away the stuff behind it, including the package. They hacked the city waste disposal servers on Nat’s phone and then went on a way-over-the-speed-limit drive through town to try and catch up before it got to the dump.

Which they did. And then Clint jumped out of a moving car into the garbage truck, fished out the package, and jumped back into the car. Which was promptly pulled over by the cop who had been four cars behind them. And they both got arrested. And sent back, coincidentally, to the same precinct who'd wound up doing mob cleanup. 

Naturally Tony and I were quite curious about what this mysterious package was, which had led to so much chaos.

So Nat and Clint explained: peanut butter cookies.

Not just any peanut butter cookies.

Tony had had a nanny as a kid who made what he swore were the best peanut butter cookies on earth. It is the standard to which he compares all other peanut butter foods to. So when nothing would cheer him up, Nat and Clint had decided to see if they could track down the nanny and try to get a recipe or something, though she was probably dead after all these years.

She wasn’t. She was alive and living in Brooklyn, and delighted to make a batch of cookies for Tony, who had grown up into 'such a nice young man,' and passed along a dinner invite to him whenever. Luckily, the cookies had been triple bagged and sealed in tupperware, so they hadn't been harmed or contaminated on the adventure.

Tony was super touched.

And the cookies were delicious.

(once we got them out of evidence, anyway)

  
  



	18. Pain Tolerances, Animal-Egos, and Madness

_ anonymous asked: Did you is know gay? _

I don’t–

I don’t have any idea what is happening here.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Who has a better ass? Steve, Sam, or Clint? _

Me.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked:  _ _ Did Steve before the serum have a high pain tolerance? I've... I've heard stories and I'm wondering if it was a high pain tolerance or insanity that helped him in certain circumstances that would have grown men cry. _

Oh, he's certainly insane. But he also has a high pain tolerance. 

He was a stoic little kid, Stevie. Aside from the near-constant illnesses, he also never shied away from roughhousing with other kids, when the other kids would have him. It was a pretty rare day that both Stevie and I came home NOT bleeding. Mostly it was just minor stuff. But childproofing is most definitely a Future Idea. Back when, kids just got injured and Learned From It. 

To be fair, it was pretty effective. 

One time some of us neighborhood kids were playing a game that went something like soccer in an abandoned lot. I don't think a single one of us was playing by the same set of rules as any other one, but it boiled down to: if the ball got near you, you kicked it as hard as you could. It got pretty heated, all of us running and kicking all over, and at one point Steve-the-tiny-human-cannonball and I were both going for the ball from opposite sides. I got to it first and kicked it, but Steve was also going for a kick and hit my shin instead. Which hurt me like crazy, but actually broke one of Steve’s toes. Being far more stubborn than he was smart, he did nothing and kept playing on it for the rest of the game, then mentioned on the way home that his foot ‘sure was smarting, Buck.’  By the time we got home it had swelled up so much we could barely get it out of his shoe. 

On another occasion, after he’d gotten super-stupid juiced, he used the shield to sled down a hillside as part of a particularly ill conceived ‘stealth attack’ that probably would have been stealthier if he hadn’t been decked up like a fourth of july parade, riding twelve pounds of greased vibranium and screaming like he had really not thought through what a terrible idea it was.

(Being Steve, he really had not thought through what a terrible idea it was. Which showed.)

Anyway, part way down the hill–which was really more of a small mountain–he hit a bump and fell off the shield. Luckily he and it were still moving at the same speed, so he snagged the shield and rode the rest of the way down. We cleaned up Nazi shop and hiked three days home. Steve mentioned that he’d tweaked his arm in the fall, and mostly we thought nothing of it. (It was still the early days, and I hadn’t yet figured out what exactly the serum did and didn’t do. For example, it did not provide Steve with any common sense at all.)

We got back to camp and I badgered Steve into seeing a medic, who informed us that his arm was actually broken. In two places. And that Steve had to either have an insanely high pain tolerance, or be some kind of crazy person.

As history can attest, he’s both.

But it’s always nice to have a second opinion.  

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Buck, if the Avengers were animals what animals would they be???? thank you. _

I assume you mean based on personality, and not which Avengers have been turned into which animals lately.

What has happened to my life that that is even a question I have to ask??

 

Anyway, Steve would be a dog. Everyone is right on the money on that one; he’d be big, fluffy, loyal as hell, appetite the size of Rhode Island, and love to play fetch. And also have the bite power to sever a man’s hand if he was so inclined. You would trust him with a baby, but also to eat the face off anyone who threatened that baby. Well. Maybe not EAT. He does have SOME standards. Theoretically.

 

Tony would be a raven. Reputation associated with death, but personality of a class clown-–likes pranks, messing with people, and trying new stuff. Dedicated to family and intelligent as hell. Chatty. Tool user. Did you know ravens can people-talk? If they couldn’t, I’m sure Tony would figure out how anyways.

 

Nat would be a swan. Beautiful, graceful, but at the top of the do-not-fuck-with list in most animals’ books. Mates for life and more loyal than you would think, with a take no shit and no prisoners attitude. I have a healthy terror of swans, as does any sane human being.

 

Clint would also be a dog, but not like Steve. He’d be one of those scrappy little terrier mutts, that descend from a working breed that are supposed to do things like kill rats. Just as loyal and smart and fun-loving as the big guys, but makes up for lack of size with pure tenacity. And so scruffy its cute.

 

Bruce would be an elephant. Smart and social, with strong emotional bonds. Generally calm and compassionate, but never something you want to be standing in front of when it gets pissed. Also really enjoys peanuts? 

 

Thor would be a lion. Content to chill out most of the time, and more social than most big cats, but also totally down to throw down on a moment’s notice. Pretty smart and not somebody you ever wanna cross. Majestic as anything. 

I would be a bear. Likes a lot of food in large quantities, and I would love to sit in a river and let dinner fling itself into my mouth. Asleep like half of the time. Big and badass but generally pretty chill, and smarter than you might think. Also a faster runner than you might expect. (That’s not really about me, bears can just run at like 35 mph, which is a thought to keep you up at night.) And if there’s one thing everyone knows about bears, it is that you do not mess with what they are protecting.

Also they are opposed to forest fires?? Not sure what that has to do with anything, but I guess I can get behind it.

* * *

  
  


[ _ theauraking _ ](https://theauraking.tumblr.com/) _ asked: So it seems Clint and Steve both seem to be a bit lacking? Yeah lacking in intelligence. But who's done the dumbest thing since being thawed out _

i am not even gonna consider this question, because if I start thinking through all the stupid nonsense clint and Steve get up to I will hurl myself out a window purely in self defense. 

 

None of the Avengers should ever spend time together. Separately, they’re reckless to the point of idiocy; together, they fight crime. And cause massive amounts of property damage, and have reduced several psychologists to tears. It...wasn’t pretty.

 

But you know, fate of the world and all that nonsense. 

 

(To be fair to them, none of the Avengers are actually stupid. They just get sucked into each others bad-decision vortexes.)

 

In the interests of preserving that most blessed of coping methods,  _ denial _ , I will only consider what Steve and Clint have gotten up to in the past two weeks. 

 

Which still gives me a horrifying wealth of options.

 

Dumbest thing Steve has done? accepted Clint’s challenge to a spicy-food-eating contest. Captain Triangle Torso has enhanced senses. He takes his NORMAL food underseasoned, because his taste buds are extra-sensitive, and he took a spiciness challenge from  _ Clint _ , who spent his developmental years eating literally anything. Last week I watched him pour pineapple juice into his hot chocolate. It was terrifying. I have seen Clint drench jalapenos in ghost pepper sauce and eat them.  I have seen him put chocolate on pizza. There is nothing that man will not eat. 

 

Nothing.

 

Steve got one bite in to one of Clint’s ghost pepper chicken wings and his whole face swelled up and turned red. He kept eating. His eyes and nose were running. He got three bites in and was leaking from his whole face. He looked like he was gonna die. He drank a gallon of milk and was in bed for over a day. His fancy supermojo can fight off toxins but not ghost peppers, apparently. He said it was the most painful thing he’d ever felt, the supersoldier easy bake experience included. 

 

Clint finished his bucket of ghost pepper hot wings and played mario kart for three hours. Which is basically a normal wednesday for him. 

 

Dumbest thing Clint has done lately? “Borrowed” Natasha’s favorite dagger set. Her vengeance was swift, brutal, and left Clint sans eyebrows and with Tony’s goatee drawn in sharpie, refreshed nightly for a week. Talk about shame.

 

She is a ruthless woman.

 

As to which of these was stupider? I honestly can't say, and thinking about it makes me regret so many decisions. 

So many. When did my life become this nonsense? 

  
  



	19. Poison, Pranks, and Drunk Darcy Lewis

_ Anonymous asked: Did you and Rumlow have a sexual relationship? _

Since Brock Rumlow is a helicarrier-sized douchecanoe, and there is mercy in the universe, no. We did not.

Please. I do have  _ some  _ taste.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: how does one prank Tony with sharpies on his face when he already has such glorious facial hair? _

He’s not Cousin It, the rest of his face is skin and therefore prankable. Primed and ready for sharpie masterpieces. Usually the one drawing on his face is Dr. Banner, as revenge for putting in too many lab hours and passing out at his workbench. Last time Tony wound up with angry eyebrows and “DR STANK” written across his forehead. And the words “huge nerd” on the back of his neck,  which he didn’t notice for three days. 

Never let it be said that Dr. Banner doesn’t have a sense of humor.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: If a poison goes out of date does it get more or less toxic _

There’s only one way to find out!

…Dr. Banner has informed me that there are, in fact, other ways to find out than poisoning someone with expired toxins. How was I supposed to know?? I don’t usually poison people, that’s more Nat’s game. 

In my experience, neither bullets nor knives go out of date, and are excellent at causing people to expire. 

Get it? _ Expire. _

I’m hilarious.

* * *

 

[ _ iamnmbr3 _ ](https://iamnmbr3.tumblr.com/) _ asked: Where did the blue jackets come from? _

Stark. 

The original version, that is. Howard. And there was actually just the one, and he made it for Steve. 

Same as with the shield, he pumped out a bunch of uniform prototypes before he even brought Steve in to talk about what he wanted. Some of them were amazingly gaudy–trust a Stark to take ‘star-spangled’ literally. There were a few that were more subdued, the blue jacket one included. But we’re talking about Howard Stark, so it shouldn’t surprise you that the blue jacket originally went with red and white striped pants. Tt was a truly, genuinely, terrible outfit.

But the jacket was salvageable. 

It was supposed to be a cold-weather uniform, so it was crazy warm. I’ve always run cold–which should have been a sign–and Steve has always run hot. Steve tried it on, started cooking immediately, and took it right back off. Howard chucked it on the reject pile and I grabbed it. 

Honestly it should have tipped somebody off that I’d been superjuiced, because a jacket tailored for Steve doesn’t fit anyone else who’s purely human. And even I had to do a little taking in at the seams, because Steve is shaped like a goddam dorito.

To this day I'm grateful that Steve didn’t pick the uniform with red and white striped pants. He’s hard enough to take seriously as it is.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Bucky tell us a story about Darcy. _

Darcy Lewis goes drinking with Thor.

That alone should be enough to send your imaginations spinning off to wild places, but that, my friends, is only where our story begins.

It is also something you should know, just in general, in case you happen to encounter Darcy Lewis.

She’s tazed a god twice, and she goes drinking with Thor. On a regular basis.

The first time Thor wanted to go drinking after I showed up, Lewis was there too. And naturally, if Thor was going out, so was she. Neither of them knew any of us newbie Avengers well yet, but being sociable sort of people, they invited us to tag along. Scott immediately agreed, but Sam was caught up doing some beta testing in the labs with Tony, and said he would catch up when they were done.

So Darcy, Thor, Scott and I went out drinking.

Fun fact about Thor: it takes him approximately one million alcohols to get drunk, but once he’s there, he likes to sing. Preferably epic ballads of victory in battle, but he’s pretty much game for any catchy song that will get a bar excited. That being the case, Lewis and Thor’s go-to Midgardian bar is a karaoke joint.

I’m sure you begin to see where things are going wrong.

Fun fact about Darcy Lewis? She can also hold her alcohol, but cannot carry at tune. Like. At all.

That doesn’t stop her from singing, mind you. Gotta respect a lady who knows she’s terrible but enjoys herself anyway.

Scott apparently loves karaoke. I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did. Even more surprising? He's not actually that bad, although like 90% of his song choices were Bruce Springsteen. No clue why. Anyway, Thor was delighted by having a buddy who was not only willing but able to sing with him, and after Scott got over his star-struck-ness they had a pretty great time.

It was a good thing that Thor and Lewis went to that bar on the regular, because I'm sure any place that hadn’t been prepared for them would have kicked all of us out. As it was, they finally booted us out the door after a rousing rendition of ‘Wrecking Ball’ had most of the bar on their feet. And broke two tables.

(Thor apparently settles his tab there in Asgardian gold, so no hard feelings from the bartenders.)

The night was young and all of us had enough booze in our systems that we decided to catch a cab back to the tower and see if we could rope anyone else into some shennanigans. Thor was buzzed at least, which for Thor means his voice is even boomier and his gestures are more expansive–you gotta be ready to duck. Scott was drunk, no question about it, and that was probably why they’d wound up singing Wrecking Ball in the first place. Scott’s a cheerful if floppy, “ I love you, I love all of you guys, I love everyone in this bar” kind of drunk, and was mostly travelling by merit of being wrapped around Thor’s bicep. I was a little buzzed myself, and Lewis had had nearly as much as I did. Remarkably, she seemed to be chugging along pretty well, some weaving and slurring aside. The lady lives up to her god-tazing reputation.

Anyway, we got out of the cab at the tower and started making our way to the doors. Scott had partially detached from Thor’s arm and needed extra support, so I was helping keep him from capsizing while Lewis trailed a few steps behind the three of us, making color commentary of our three stooges act.

And then out of nowhere, she just…yelled.

All three of us whipped around as quickly as three drunk superpeople can, just in time to see Darcy Lewis dish out what looked to be a pretty dang textbook perfect roundhouse kick to the chest of some poor guy.

The guy went down. Lewis went down too, because the kick had totally overbalanced her. Thor and I dropped Scott and ran over to help.

Which was when Sam sat up and said, "That was a hell of a kick."

Because apparently he’d finished up his testing and gone out to catch up with us, made it partway down the block to call a cab, then saw us getting out of our taxi. He jogged back–not being particularly stealthy, but we were drunk–and put his hand on Lewis’s shoulder to get her attention.

Lewis, having pretty poor vision even sober, and worse vision when drunk and without her glasses, just saw some big male figure who’d popped up out of nowhere and grabbed her by the shoulder.

So naturally she kicked him in the chest.

She apologized profusely, but the rest of us thought it was pretty funny. And Sam was impressed the next morning when he discovered that she’d left a visible footprint on his chest.

Darcy insists she has no idea why she did it. Or where she learned to kick like that.

The rest of us have just chalked it up to mysterious Darcy Lewis powers.

  
  
  



	20. Peggy is a Boss, Dum-Dum is Not, and Kilroy is a Cat

_ anonymous asked: Can we have more stories about the Howlies, please? _

This is the story of DumDum Dougan’s bowler hat.

There are a lot of crazy stories from when we Howlies were settling in together. (Uh. There are also a lot of crazy stories from after we got settled, and a lot of crazy stories in general.) Most of us had the kind of overblown personalities that would dominate other units, which was part of why the higher-ups agreed to make us a unit in the first place–nobody else would have us. That being the case, there were a lot of spats between us while we got used to each other. 

What we all rapidly learned was that the best way to deal with those arguments quickly was usually a field test to see who was right. This method of conflict resolution led to such memorable things as the Great Bean-Off, the Red Socks Incident,and the List of Twenty Reasons Peggy Carter Is in Charge. 

It should be noted that Peggy Carter was never formally a Howlie. Informally, she was the boss of the Howlies. Ask Steve, he’ll agree.

Anyway, if the option was available, arguments would be resolved by trying whatever was being debated and letting reality figure out who was right. 

Since this was 1. the army and 2. before cell phone app games were invented, there was almost always an audience for these things, and with that audience came bets about who was right.

War can sometimes be really boring, guys, you gotta get your laughs where you can. And laughing at the baddest of asses making regular asses of themselves rapidly became a noble 107th tradition. We made good entertainment, I guess.

This story begins with the fact that the Howlies were picked more for personality than skill–which actually worked well, since we had enough diversity of skill anyway–but that meant we had a bit of specialization overlap. Namely, DumDum and I were both marksmen.

Naturally, DumDum insisted he had better aim. I disagreed. Things escalated.

Escalation eventually wound up with DumDum yelling “If you’re a better marksman than me, I'll eat my hat!!”

Which. Was a terrible choice of words. 

Word rapidly spread of the disagreement, and soon enough somebody had set up a firing range for us to resolve the issue. The targets were a couple of thoroughly defaced nazi propaganda posters, and the prize was apparently DumDum Dougan’s hat for dinner. The crowd was some sixty-odd soldiers, and pretty much all of them had placed bets on the outcome.

I won. 

I could stretch that part of this story out longer, but. It’s me. We all knew I was gonna win.  Not to say that DumDum was bad; I'm just better. 

But the thing about guys like us? We take things literally. So people immediately began insisting that the hat be eaten–some being so helpful as to provide salt and spam as toppings. 

I, being a gentlemanly sort, and also being extremely unwilling to discover what smells DumDum’s digestive system would produce if filled with spam and felt (we all shared a barracks, it would be terrible) instead offered to simply take the hat as payment. 

I’m nice like that. 

But bowler hats are not a look that works for me–I don’t have enough of a handlebar mustache, I think. So the hat would up back on DumDum’s head pretty promptly. 

But technically it belongs to me.

It’s in the Smithsonian now, with a little plaque thanking DumDum’s estate for the donation, but rightfully, it’s mine.

Maybe if I ever grow a handlebar mustache, I’ll go claim it.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: I will give you cookies and this puppy if you tell us about the List of Twenty Reasons Peggy Carter Is in Charge. _

Literally eight of you have asked for this, so. I will write down as much of the List as I can remember. I might miss a few, it’s been a long time. The original list was added to by all of us Howlies over a long while. It’s all written down in one of Steve’s sketchbooks somewhere. 

Twenty Reasons Peggy Carter Is In Charge:

  1. Because otherwise Steve probably _would_ have walked to Austria. And probably he would have gotten lost. And all of us would have died.
  2. Because somebody needs to class up this unit, and none of us are doing it.
  3. Because she’s the one with the intel.
  4. Because we do what Steve says, and Steve does what Peggy says. Except when Steve says something stupid, then we just do what Peggy says.
  5. Because she starts the best barfights.
  6. Because none of us know how to requisition gear and we might run out of bullets or starve without her.
  7. Because Steve looks terrible in a red dress and heels.
  8. Because her plans usually end with nazis exploding, which is nice.
  9. Because she would kick all our asses if we got ourselves killed without her.
  10. Because who else will find people to fly us to terrifying new places to do terrifying new things?
  11. Because she’s the only one who got out of the Cat-Raccoon Incident unscathed.
  12. Because she can drink all of us but Steve under the table
  13. and look good doing it too.
  14. Because none of us can do sneaky.
  15. Because the last time they let us talk to the reporters without her, DumDum punched one.
  16. Because somehow she always finds good coffee.
  17. Because she has the best accent.
  18. Because she’ll put up with all of us.
  19. Because she’d beat every last one of us in a fight.
  20. Because she said so. And none of us are dumb enough to disagree with Peggy Carter.



* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: I bring to you beyoncè's lemonade and a home - made tiramisu as a sacrifice. Is it enough to tell us about the Cat - racoon Incident? _

Man, you guys are bored today, because in ten minutes I've had ten requests for this. I will briefly tell the story of the cat-raccoon incident.

In most of the camps we stayed at, there were cats. Dogs, too, but the cats were everywhere. Food stores and garbage that a good-size camp needs means there’s a high chance of rats or mice, and one of the best ways to deal with that problem was a good mousing cat. So most every camp had a couple hanging around. The officers mostly turned a blind eye to them.

There was one camp we were at for a few months, and the mouser there was this huge fluffy grey lump they called Kilroy.  (It was not a very original name; I think I met six camp cats called Kilroy.) Kilroy was a remarkably lazy cat, when he wasn’t hunting, but also pretty friendly. He was also an amazingly warm personal heater for whoever he decided to grace with his presence. That being the case, he was welcome in most barracks when the weather started to go cold. 

Mice are active at night, though, so often he would linger in the kitchen until a couple hours after sundown, then head to the nearest barracks and scratch at the door until somebody let him in. 

One chilly night in february, there was a scratching at the door of our barracks at nearly two in the morning. We were all asleep and even when it got loud enough to wake us up, none of us wanted to move. But it persisted. So eventually Falsworth got out of his bunk–he was closest to the door–let Kilroy in, and got back in bed. 

Kilroy ambled a few steps in, then started heading for Gabe’s bunk. Which was when Gabe and Falsworth realized that what had been let in wasn’t a Kilroy.

It was a raccoon. 

I don’t know if Gabe had some sort of raccoon related trauma in his past or if he just hates them in general, but he screamed and bolted upright in his bed. Which woke the rest of us up, quite startled, and, since we were in bunks, resulted in about half of us hitting our heads on the upper bunks. DumDum, who’d insisted on sleeping top bunk, lunged awake so hard it actually tipped the whole bunkbed over, and wound up spilling him and Happy Sam on the floor. 

All the chaos caused the raccoon to be terrified, and it started running around, looking for an exit. All of us were tangled in blankets, and most of us had no idea what was happening, and the only two who did were Gabe and Falsworth. Gabe was screaming like he was being attacked by a six foot spider, and Falsworth had started chasing the raccoon around. The rest of us were yelling, trying to figure out what was going on, and there was this angry bright-eyed  _ thing  _ running around, scratching and biting anyone who came near. Soon enough, it cornered itself behind Steve’s footlocker, but it kept biting at anyone who tried to grab it.

At that point we’d made enough noise to wake half the camp. Peggy, who’d been staying nearby in the ops center, stormed over to see what was happening. She burst through the door like an avenging angel and found a squad of battle hardened commandos with bedhead, wrapped in blankets, two bunks overturned, Gabe still yelling, and half of us bleeding from raccoon bites. 

She marched in , stole Steve’s blanket, tossed it over the raccoon, bundled it up, and carried the whole thing right back out of the barracks. 

When she came and found us at the medic’s after she’d let the raccoon loose in the woods, she was not at all impressed to discover that every single Howlie had somehow gotten injured, either from the raccoon itself, by blundering into each other in the dark, or by falling out of bed.


	21. Ghosts, Pets, and the Pistol Packin' Mama

_ Anonymous asked: Why did DumDum punch a reporter? _

Because he was a racist jerk. 

Look, you gotta understand that we were a pretty controversial unit–we had guys from different countries, guys from different races, and were led by an Irish guy–and that did not go over well with a lot of the bigoted jerkmonkeys who unfortunately had more say in politics than they should. We were the first integrated unit in the American forces, and we interacted with Peggy a lot. It was pretty common for people with more power than sense to say racist or sexist stuff to the Howlies. Which just goes to show that those people were dumber than a concussed goldfish. 

It was equally common for those people to get punched. Or to later discover itching powder in their underwear. (Like I said, Peggy could do sneaky.) 

It was worth the punishment duties it usually got us. After a while the higher-ups figured out to not send the douchebags to go talk to us, or we’d send them back bleeding. We were not the most levelheaded guys, and the whole peaceful-protest thing was not really at the forefront of our minds in a war zone. But anyone who knew us Howlies at all was not surprised that we punched any sexist white supremacist that was dumb enough to spout that bull at us. 

Because you know what us Howlies did best? Beat the crap out of white supremacists. 

It’s just that usually the white supremacists we were beating up were nazis.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Bucky, have you ever seen a ghost? Have you ever fought a ghost? _

Does Steve count? He was dead. He has a tendency to–well, not walk, but run through walls. 

Although by the same standard I'm a ghost too. 

Which would make every fight Steve and I have a ghost battle. That’s kinda awesome.

* * *

[ _ ohsweetcrepes _ ](https://ohsweetcrepes.tumblr.com/) _ asked: I just want to know how Bucky feels about animals other than dogs (which I think he likes, now I'm second-guessing myself). Which ones would he adopt as pets and which ones would he prefer to be nowhere near him or in a proper zoo/in the wild? _

There are pretty few animals that I don’t think are great. If it holds still, I'm gonna pet it. If it bites me, well, I already got one metal hand, I could probably make do with two metal hands. Although it would probably sound like banging pots and pans together when I clapped. 

Having had several long conversations with various animal-powered superpeople, I can say that as much as I would like to have a pet tiger, most wild animals are better off staying that way, or left in the care of professionals who know what the heck they’re doing. I barely know what the heck I'm doing with my own life, let alone the life of some animal. 

Thor and I have been watching this show called Crocodile Hunter. If Steve Irwin was still around he probably would have shown up in New York a few years ago to wrassle some Chitauri. But Thor assures me that he’s quite happy meeting various dinosaurs up in Valhalla. 

* * *

_ Anonymous asked: I would love more howling commando hijinks! _

Oh, how to pick just one…

Well, here’s a story about a plane. One Steve did not actually jump out of. 

A rare tale indeed. 

If you’ve ever been in the military, you’d know that everyone in every branch thinks their branch is best. This is not a new thing, and it was certainly going strong during WWII. Mostly it just meant that if a bunch of navy guys wandered into an army bar there would be a fight, but honestly it was all in good fun, just a way to blow off steam. 

So of course there was a friendly rivalry between us Howlies and the pilots we hung around with. Most of the pilots and crews we knew were transport guys, not bombers, but we got around more than most units and wound up spending a few weeks stationed near the 97th Bombardment Group. The 97th was made of B-17s, these huge bomber planes called Flying Fortresses. And they earned the name, those birds were basically the tanks of the sky. They ran a 10 man crew, and we got friendly with the spectacular idiots of the Pistol Packin Mama. As you can tell from the name of their plane, the were exactly the kind of guys who would get along with a group of people called the Howling Commandoes. 

But rivalries being what they were, pranks happened. 

The Pistol Packers fired the opening salvo. Merrifield, Mama’s copilot, was probably the mastermind behind it; he was a good tempered guy who never passed on a pun. Which was why for the first prank, the Pistol Packers stole all our underwear. 

Hahaha, commandoes. 

Such an affront could not stand. We put shoe polish on the rims of their headsets, and they came off mission with black rings on the sides of their faces. They hid dead fish in our barracks. We salted their coffees. 

The usual nonsense. 

But then we came back one night to discover that every one of our footlockers had been painted with ‘EAT IT.’ 

And that, my friends, sparked a whole new wave of stupidity.

Morita was the genius behind our retaliation. During WWII, VD was a major concern, and condoms were widely available for any soldier who wanted or needed them. Each of us went separately and got as many as we could get our hands on. Steve’s face was red enough he could’ve been used to flag down a plane.  The quartermasters probably thought us Howlies were about to host the biggest orgy camp had ever seen, but by the time each of us had contributed to the stash, we had some 300-odd condoms. 

So that night we went and broke into the airfield. We were highly skilled troops, it wasn't that hard. Gabe mumbled something about using our skills for evil, but soon enough we had found the Pistol Packin Mama, all glorious 104 feet of her. 

She’d taken a few hits  on their last run, and was awaiting maintenance before she went up again. Luckily for us, the repair crews were a little swamped, and it would be a few days before they got to her. So we climbed aboard and set to work. 

Anything we could fit a condom over got wrapped. Joysticks, armrests, controls–all of it got covered in latex. The remaining 250 condoms we inflated. There's nothing more manly than a bunch of soldiers sitting around in a bomber blowing up condoms. 

After about four hours of macho dick balloon making, we were near ready pass out from lack of oxygen. But we’d also managed to about half-fill the Mama with condom balloons. 

Our work done, we sneaked back to the barracks and fell asleep. 

As I understand it, Merrifeld realized he’d forgotten a lucky picture of his girl inside the Mama, and went back to pick it up. He opened the hatch and a rain of condoms descended on him, which attracted attention from pretty much everyone else nearby. The Pistol Packers got crap about it from everyone for weeks. Eventually, they came to us and declared truce. As a gesture of good faith, Steve offered to do some nose art for them. 

So Steve painted the Pistol Packin Mama. And how a man who can’t ask for condoms without his face turning the color of a stoplight can paint a larger than life half naked lady on a plane calm as you like, I will never understand. 

  
  



	22. The Cow and the Reason The Title Is What It Is

[ _iamnmbr3_ ](https://iamnmbr3.tumblr.com/) _asked: Tell us a story about a cow._

The Howlies were an unconventional unit. We moved faster than most other groups, and we were willing and able to take bigger, harder targets than most our size could. We also had the advantage of all being experts in our respective fields, and combined with Steve’s conniving artist brain being in charge, we came at problems in unexpected ways. All those things meant that we ran a lot of what Phillips misleadingly called ‘precision ops,’ where our small team would covertly reach and then take out a target beyond our own lines, then exfiltrate back to safety. Generally, whatever our target was wound up as a massive heap of ash and rubble, because the Howlies had a really unnecessary number of guys who wanted to demolitions. Uh. I’ll admit to being guilty of that one myself.

So we would get dropped at whatever point the brass thought they could get us to without detection, and then we’d make our own way overland to the target. Sometimes we had transport for that, but pretty often we were on foot. (On a couple occasions, we had bikes. Literal actual bicycles, not motorcycles, which was….not ideal.)  We’d take the target, and then get back to the drop point for transport home. Usually, we had no backup and no extraction plan beyond: “Get your reckless asses back to the drop point, or get dead.” (Another nugget of wisdom from Colonel Phillips.) Often, that meant we walked back. Not fun, when you’re carrying 50lb of gear through hostile territory, but not the worst thing.

The problem was that if anyone got injured, the only way to get them out was to carry them out ourselves; we couldn't exactly call in an airlift. Luckily, serious injuries were surprisingly rare for the Howlies. I mean, I lost an arm that one time, but it worked out. I got a new one.

So one such op had us crossing several miles of bombed-out farmland to get to blow the crap out of a nazi supply depot. Blowing up supply depots is great, because often they already have explosives inside, so you get more bang-for-your-bomb than usual. Op went off without a hitch; depot went up with a boom, and we cleaned up and got ready to head back.

Which was when Jim Morita tripped.

He didn't even trip over anything in particular, just kind of stumbled over his own feet and went down with a pretty hilarious yelp. Morita was generally a graceful, sneaky sort, so that kind of pratfall was hilariously out of character. It was great until he stood up and found he couldn't put any weight on his right foot. He’d sprained his ankle.

Morita was a little guy, and we had no shortage of muscle on the Howlies. Aside from Steve, Dumdum used to be a circus strongman, and I'm no slouch myself. The physical task of piggybacking him fifteen-odd miles back to the drop point was doable, but frankly it was gonna be a huge pain. It’s just not comfortable, and Morita and whoever was carrying him would have to pass their gear off to other people.

Being inventive sorts of guys, we took a look around to see if there was anything we could use to make our lives easier. Gabe Jones located a cow.

Yes. A cow.

Now, us Howlies were a surprisingly urban group–Steve and I were born Brooklynites, and Gabe was a New Yorker too. Jaques was Parisian, Dumdum Bostonian. Morita was from Fresno. Falsworth was sort of the exception, but he was born and raised on a manor outside London, so you couldn't exactly call him a country boy.

So us street-wise city slickers took a look at Gabe Jones’s cow, and figured well. It was kinda like a horse, right??

Cows are not kinda like horses.

We were later informed that our four legged friend was a dairy cow, and she was generally a pretty docile lady. Whatever farm she’d been from had probably been caught in the bombing, and she’d been wandering around since. She was so glad to come across some friendly human faces that she pretty readily allowed us to loop some rope around her front half. (Cowboys we were not. We basically just wrapped rope around her until there was something to hold on to.) Then Steve picked Morita up and set him on the back of the cow.

For a long, glorious moment, it seemed like it might work out.

And then the cow realized there was something on her back.

And that she DID NOT LIKE IT.

I’d never seen a cow run before. They’re not particularly graceful, but man, once they get started they are damn hard to stop. Morita was a tenacious sonovagun, and he hung on to that rope like his dignity depended on it.

Little did he realize that his dignity was long gone. The cow was galloping, his legs were flapping, he was bouncing around like a bullet in a blender. If any of the rest of us had managed to stop laughing, we probably would have gone after him, but we could barely breathe, let alone run.

Turns out cows are not really riding animals. Who knew?

After an acre or so, the cow, being a gentle sort of lady, realized that the thing on her back was staying put, and she slowed to a walk, then ambled over to some grass and started munching. The rest of us caught up, figured out a lead rope, and set off towards friendly territory.

I’m not sure what exactly passed through Phillips’s mind when we showed up with a freshly-commandeered dairy cow, but it was hardly the worst thing we’d ever turned up with, so he let it slide.

The cow got adopted by camp kitchen staff, and we had fresh cream in our coffees most mornings, which was nice. The KP boys named her Heil Heifer, and I'm told that she served honorably until the war ended, and was then passed off to a nice French-Jewish family.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: I like how this blog is becoming "Buck-grampa, tell us a story", "aight, lil shorts, there was this cow..." Cuz you're old._

Wait what???? I'm old???? I hadn't noticed, I thought that 100 year birthday party was for a different jackass with a metal arm.

Look, the only reason most of my stories are about the good ole days is because most of the morons I hang out with now have blackmail on me. And I have blackmail on them. We’re all doing the nuclear deterrent thing, it seemed appropriate with the Russian-American vibe we’ve got going.

So I can’t dish dirt on them without getting dished back.

And I like you guys just fine, but I would rather murder every one of you than let Tony tell anyone the story of the three shrimp plates.

Death before dishonor and all that.

  



	23. Sleepwalking, Punks, Fireworks, and World Takeovers

[ _ ridersofdickhan _ ](https://ridersofdickhan.tumblr.com/) _ asked: tell us a story about an insect _

Parker insists that he doesn't normally sleepwalk. 

I have no idea if it’s true or not; for the sake of anyone who lives with him (myself occasionally included) I hope it is. 

However. When he’s sleeping off a few injuries and is pain-medicated enough that it’s effective on his jacked up metabolism, he  _ does _ . 

Which would not normally be a big deal. Thor sleepwalks too, and the only problem with that is he sleeps naked. So I thought nothing of it when Peterbird wandered into the common room late at night with his eyes closed. He kinda just showed up and then stood there, so I figured I’d let him be and went off to go make myself some hot chocolate. Ten or so minutes later, I stepped around the divider wall back to the common room. 

And promptly had the everloving daylights scared out of me. 

_ Why? _ you ask,  _ why were ten precious years scared off your ridiculous life, Bucky??? _

Well. Because Parker was standing right on the other side of the wall, about two inches from my face. With an alarmingly vacant expression on his face. Because he was sleepwalking. 

He was sleepwalking _ on the fucking ceiling _

* * *

 

[ _ agenderraskel _ ](https://agenderraskel.tumblr.com/) _ asked: You call Steve "punk". Have you ever slipped punk clothing into his closet? Does he wear it? _

Well, he absolutely refuses to wear combat boots. Which I find personally offensive, because I wear steeltoe combats almost every day. But Steve insists that having tromped across most of Europe in steeltoes and only being saved from trenchfoot thanks to the miracle of old-timey science, he will no longer wear combat boots unless they’re the custom ones that go with his Cap costume. Sorry. Uniform. And that since sneakers exist in the future and are, and I quote, “Like walking around with old Mrs. McKinnon’s angel cake for shoes, Buck, it’s great,” he will not be wearing boots if he doesn't have to. 

The day we talked him into skinny jeans was pretty great. Have you ever seen a dog doing that high-step when you put shoes on them?? He looked like that for the first half hour or so. And then he tried to ‘jog’ up the Tower lobby steps, and split his pants open at the crotch. 

It was a good day for the ladies (and some of the gents. You know. The ones who didn't immediately grow inferiority complexes) in the lobby of Stark Tower. 

It was not a good day for Steve Rogers. 

Putting Steve in any kind of plaid just makes him look like a lumberjack, not a punk. So that doesn't work.

Steve can’t wear black without looking like a vampire, he's so pale. But one time he borrowed my dont-touch-me black leather motorcycle jacket and managed to make that look badass for a little while. And then he let a little girl in Central Park facepaint a sunflower on his left cheek, which pretty much spoiled and sort of badass look he might have been managing. Which wasn't much, because he was still wearing khakis. 

Dork.

* * *

 

_ anonymous asked: how do you feel about your growing tumblr empire? _

Well, Tony has a Hulk. It’s only fair that I get an army.

A very scattered and easily-distracted-by-cat-pictures army, but you work with what you got.

* * *

 

[ _ unamedwatcher _ ](http://unamedwatcher.tumblr.com/) _ asked: _

_ Did you really convince little Steve Rogers that the fireworks on the fourth of July were for his birthday? _

Actually no. 

That was the handiwork of one Mrs. Sarah Rogers, who used to take her little asthmatic arrhythmic tiny baby son on the roof to watch the fireworks on his birthday. (Mostly so that they didn't have to be in the apartment with Steve’s dad, who had shellshock that he medicated with waaaay too much alcohol, and he was always worse on the fourth, since it sounded like there were explosions going off everywhere. Steve’s dad died when he was three, and my ma said once that Mrs. Rogers might have missed him, but she didn't miss the bruises he left.)

As it happened, that was how I first met Steve–on the roof of the building when I was three and he was turning two. I actually remember it, which is pretty incredible considering how old I was and how swiss-cheese my brain is. But there was Mrs. Sarah, with her tiny little baby on her hip. I’d never seen anybody so fair-skinned and blonde as Mrs. Sarah and Stevie, and the lights off the fireworks painted them all sorts of colors. Most of the other little kids were crying and had to be brought inside because the noise scared them, but not baby Stevie–he was reaching his little bitty baby hands up, trying to grab the sparkly fireworks. Probably the noise didn't bother him because he was partially deaf, but Mrs. Sarah always insisted that it was just that he had more courage than could fit inside him. 

Generally, she also mentioned that all that courage had taken up the space where his common sense was supposed to be. 

When Steve was three, he said his favorite color was America–by which he meant red, white, and blue, because that was the colors for his birthday, and everyone always celebrated with him.

Even after Mrs. Sarah died, us Barneses kept up the fireworks story, and I passed it on to the Howlies eventually. 

I don’t know how old Steve was when he figured out that the whole city wasn't just throwing him a huge birthday celebration, but I'm sure that if you asked him, he’d still insist the fireworks were for him.

Whatever PR schmuck decided to name him Captain America probably had no idea how accurate a name it was.

* * *

 

[ _ agenderraskel _ ](https://agenderraskel.tumblr.com/) _ asked: What do you think of Jarvis? Can he get inside your arm? Has he ever done so? Are you ever concerned about him taking over the world? _

I like Jarvis. He's everything nickel science fiction novels promised back when I was a kid.

Jarvis–and anyone else for that matter–can’t get inside my arm because my arm has no ability to transmit or receive data, except for an internal data port under the armor plates which has to be accessed with a unique cable. So if you can get at it and you have the necessary equipment you can mess with my arm, but it’s impossible to hack while I'm out doing stuff. 

Not that Tony or I told anyone that for the first few months. I managed to knock Steve’s glass out of his hands four times, throw things at Clint six times, and smack Sam upside the head twice before they realized that my arm was not being remotely controlled by ‘the evil Dr Dextrous.’ 

I’m not concerned about Jarvis taking over the world because probably he’d be a lot better at keeping things running smoothly that current management. Jarvis has managed to keep Tony Stark mostly alive without actually having  _ hands  _ for like. Several decades now. Which probably qualifies him for sainthood, or at least a really nice retirement package. I figure after all that chaos managing a few billion non-geniuses without access to flying tanks is basically a cakewalk. 

But since Jarvis has more sense than–well. Basically any Avenger–he knows that taking over the world would be way more stress than it’s worth.

Jarvis is smart like that.

  
  



	24. Recklessness, Paparazzi, and Smuggling

_ Anonymous asked: Have you ever been in a situation where you had to play soccer mom? Not one where Steve played your soccer son. _

Well, last week I kicked the heads off of about fifteen robots, and then used them as projectiles to hit other robots with. Does that count as soccer? Afterwards, I yelled at Steve for taking his helmet off dramatically in the middle of a fight. He got a concussion. Again.

It’s not there to prevent hat hair, Steven, it’s so you don't DIE. Which is also my job, and I can use all the help I can get.

Maybe we should get him a pair of sunglasses or something, so he has something he can remove at a dramatic point mid-combat without actually losing safety equipment. 

Sometimes I think the Star Spangled Show actually made his tendency towards the dramatic even worse.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Does Steve ever yell at YOU about not taking risks? _

Friday has politely provided an audio transcript, since I felt it would be the most effective way to answer this question.

_ 5/4/17, 18:00 _

_ S: Bucky, I can’t believe you went after that giant squid alone like that! You could’ve died! _

_ B: Wouldn’t be the first time– _

_ S: How could you be so reckless?! _

_ B; –probably wouldn’t be the last. I’m just following your fine example, Stevie.  _

_ S: I’m being serious, Buck! I can’t believe you did that! _

_ B: And I couldn’t believe you were dumb enough to go after that MegaSharkaphant on your own in central park last week, but you did! _

_ S: You and the chainsaw-hands robot! Two weeks ago! _

_ B: That was last month, Mr. I-Can-Handle-This-Alien-Bugdog-Swarm-On-My-Own, and I had backup! _

_ S: Then the time with the sorcerer and the statue of President Washington! _

_ B: Fine! Then the SIXTEEN ORANGE KNITWEAR MONSTERS!! _

_ S: YOU SWORE YOU’D NEVER BRING UP THE SIXTEEN ORANGE KNITWEAR MONSTERS _

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: strategies for dealing with paparazzi? _

  1. Get rocks
  2. Aim for the lenses
  3. Deny everything



* * *

_ Anonymous asked: Bucky! (or Mod Hell, whichever works best) I'm starting swing in my dance class and I have the choice of being the guy or girl. I'm really excited but I don't know which one is more fun? _

If you get to pick, be both! But honestly it’s gonna depend on what kind of swing you’re doing. If it’s something with a lot of lifts, dancing the male part is gonna take a lot of strength, and being physically larger than your partner helps. If you’re dancing female, you’ll still need to be strong but it’s more about core strength as opposed to lifting strength. Often getting lifted can be kinda scary–you're trusting someone else to not drop you, so that may factor in. Becca and I used to make skinny Stevie help us practice lifts, and while I never dropped Becca, I may have tossed Stevie a few times. But only when he was being extra dumb.

If you're not in a style with a lot of lifts, then go with what seems more fun! Guys get to lead and have to have the confidence in themselves to do so, but girls get to do lots of spins, and tend to get flashier moves. Plus they get skirts, which always seemed more fun to dance in than pants. I guess the trade-off for swooshy skirts is having to dance in heels. According to most women who have to wear them a lot, heels are the devil’s footwear.

Which is why I generally stick to my combat boots.

Well. With one  [ notable ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/post/152972562346/do-you-practice-your-strut-or-does-it-come) [ exception. ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/post/152976540491/re-the-murder-strut-i-could-say-gotta-be-the)

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: I just re injured my ankle, do you have any tips on how to make it heal faster? _

Nazi science? Magic? Replace it with a robot ankle?

I dunno buddy, I'm not a doctor.

* * *

 

[ _ cuckoobirdy _ ](https://cuckoobirdy.tumblr.com/) _ asked: Can you please tell us a story about how badass Peggy is? Or maybe Natasha? Or maybe both of them in the same story? _

Pegs lived in a time when spy gear was not designed for women. 

This was true during the war, but while Stevie and I were taking our ice baths, Peggy kept fighting the good fight. Without the backup of us Howlies, for the most part. So this is a story that was passed on to me care of Tony and Nat, who heard it firsthand from the lady legend herself. 

I don't mean this in some sort of stupid sexist women-are-too-weak-to-lift-heavy-manly-guns; I mean that most of the espionage gear being made for most American and European intelligence services was designed to go with male clothing. Some of it you could make work, but a lot of it would raise eyebrows if worn by a lady. And it wasn't like the concealed carry rigs they were issuing to agents were designed to work with the cut of ladies’ clothes.

So Peggy designed a lot of her own gear. (Howard ‘helped;’ mostly he just got in the way or made things explode. but sometimes he successfully invented a Useful Thing.)

Peggy became known in SHIELD (then the SSR) as the Woman Who Had Everything. not because she was really hard to shop for (she was) but because if you needed something, odds were Peggy had it stashed somewhere on her person. First aid supplies, extra ammo, listening devices, a tiny sewing kit; all of it got tucked away somewhere in her flawlessly tailored suits. 

Not that Peggy was particularly heavily armed. She carried less weaponry than most of us Howlies did (though, to be fair, we’re hardly a normal standard to judge against. Dernier once cleaned out his pack and found twenty-six loose grenades he ‘thought he’d lost.’) Peggy usually had a gun or two and a handful of knives, plus maybe a cosh or set of brass knuckles, because Peggy Carter was a brawler. A beautiful, down-and-dirty, kick-you-in-the-nuts-and-insult-your-mother barroom brawler. 

But anyway, Peggy was mysteriously adept at smuggling what seemed to be half the quartermaster’s supply around on her person without ever looking less than immaculate. Which baffled her coworkers to no end.

 

Fast forward a number of years, and the Black Widow joined up with SHIELD.  For reasons Nat refused to disclose, she was assigned an op where 50’s costume was needed. And since there wasn't enough time to make her a custom dress suitable for the occasion, the SHIELD techs were a little stumped on what to do, aside from running out to the shops and hoping they got lucky.

Then one bright little bugger remembered that there was a crate of Director Carter’s old things in the archive, and there was a lovely red dress in there. They fished it out, and lo and behold, Nat and Pegs were the same damn size.

Nat used the dress for her op. According to Clint, she came back enraptured with the dress. It had concealment options like she’d never seen before. Allegedly–and this is Clint, so take everything with a grain of salt–she proved how awesome the ‘sneaky dress’ was by smuggling an entire chicken out of the mess hall unnoticed. 

  
  



	25. The Murder Strut, Loki, & Mrs. Rogers

[ _agenderraskel_ ](https://agenderraskel.tumblr.com/) _asked: Your hair is gorgeous. Who's tried to style it?_

Most of the Avengers have at some time or another. Steve, Tony, Thor, and Clint are all surprisingly good hairstylists.  I used to be able to do basic braids for my sisters, but the asskicking robot hand makes it pretty hard. Hair tends to get stuck in the plates.

Also–and my memory is pretty spotty, so this could be wrong–I think a Hydra tech gave me french braids once??? I don't know why.

Fuckin nazis.

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: Hey Bucky, what's the stupidest bet anyone's made in the tower?_

Yesterday Clint told Steve ‘bet you can't beat me to the car.’

 

And then Clint parkoured down three flights of stairs.

 

Steve just jumped out a third-story window.

 

Steve won.

…god. I can't believe this is my life.

* * *

_Anonymous asked: Bucky I just threatened to fight the cash register at work, and it made me wonder, how do I know if I'm someone's angry smol?_

Well, first you must determine if you are both angry and smol. Steve is still both, despite being six feet plus of “patriotic justice.” Someone needs to stop that man from reading his own press coverage.

If you are, then you gotta figure out if there’s someone who:

  1. Fishes your ass out of the fire after you’ve jumped in.
  2. Tells you you're an idiot for jumping in in the first place, because you are.
  3. Beats up the fire because you're in way over your head.
  4. Laughs at your injuries because you’re an idiot. (see above: fire jumping)



If there is someone who meets the above criteria, you probably need to go buy them a thank-you cheeseburger. They deserve it.

Now go kick that cash register’s ass. I'm sure it has it coming.

* * *

[ _monicaoakwood_ ](https://monicaoakwood.tumblr.com/) _asked: How does one murder strut?_

Mostly you just lock your eyes on target, tilt your chin down a bit, channel all your rage and existential angst outwards, and try to silently communicate that any person or immovable object that gets in your way is gonna come down with a serious case of the grenades.

A lot of it’s in the hips.

* * *

_Anonymous asked: When's the last time you got to snuggle up under a handmade blanket just for you (or handed down)? I will absolutely make you one if you don't have one._

This depends entirely on how you define ‘handmade blanket.’ If you mean like, somebody made a quilt or an afghan or something, probably before the war. Most of the blankets we had were handmade by various family members.

The Stark Tower stitch&bitch has yet to produce a blanket. I have no idea how, since there’s like six of us all knitting and sewing and crocheting, but somehow it just hasn’t happened yet. Too busy making hammer cozies and a pompom hat big enough to fit on the Hulk.

However, if you define handmade blanket as _a blanket somebody made by hand_ , then just last week I took a post-battle nap under a table at a press conference and Clint made me a ‘blanket’ out of Stark Industries t-shirts.

Not sure if that counts or not.

* * *

_Anonymous asked: Has Thor ever introduced you to his brother?_

Sure, but at the time I thought he was pulling some kind of prank, and the rest of the Avengers were in on it. I assumed that they were just supporting his foray into Midgardian practical jokes, like that time with the hammer and the toilet.

Honestly, would you have taken him seriously if a big black horse wandered up, and Thor said, “Have you met my brother??”

So I said, “Yeah, I can really see the family resemblance.”

 

To be fair, at the time I didn’t know Loki could shapeshift.

* * *

_Anonymous asked: I am internally convinced that Sarah Rogers was the sort of low key badass mom who's disappointed voice could me even Hydra agents reconsider their lives and their choices (but not little shit Steve Rogers) confirm/deny? Mostly I just want neat stories about Sarah Rogers. Please?_

I have no idea what the hell you're talking about; there was nothing low key about Sarah Rogers’ badassness.

Steve got his bullheadedness and moral compass from his mom, and even with the super serum he can’t match her Disapproval Face. You think that the Captain America Is Disappointed In You Face is rough? Try Sarah Rogers’ You Really Should Know Better But I Love You Anyways Face. I can personally testify that it was worse than Nazi torture.

 

I’m convinced that if Sarah Rogers had still been around by the time WWII started, and if we’d managed to get her behind German lines, she probably could have convinced Hitler to be less of an asshole and just go to art school instead. She was just that good.

 

At one point, when Stevie was sick, Mrs. Sarah was coming home from the hospital with his (very expensive) medicine, and she got cornered in an alley by three muggers. It was the Depression, people were desperate. Anyway, Mrs. Sarah gave them her best mom face and told them that she had more faith in them than this, that they could be better if they just tried, that bad times don’t mean you have to be a bad person. They gave her the medicine back. One of them cried.

She even managed to make Stevie reconsider his choices, believe it or not. It’s just that Steve’s first, second, and third considerations of way too many subjects all result in the same conclusion: ‘I should punch someone.’

 

It’s no wonder that Sarah Rogers had such a good Disappointment Face. She got so much practice.

  



	26. Peggy's Barfights and the Howlie Origin Story

_ anonymous asked: So Peggy starts the best bar fights? Elaborate, please. _

oh man, [ those were the good old days.  ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/post/153069174726/could-you-tell-us-something-about-peggy-carter)

The Howlies got in a lot of bar fights. You might think that the last thing a bunch of soldiers would want to do with their free time is fight people, but actually bar fights were a great stress relief. Nobody really got seriously injured, and we tried to keep property damage to a minimum.  (And we also almost never started bar fights, for the record. Most of the time it was guys from another unit who wanted to prove how badass they were by taking on the infamous Howling Commandos.) So bar fights themselves weren’t that unusual.

But Peggy’s bar fights…oh, they were glorious. 

See, Peggy never got in a fight for no reason; she was smarter than that. But when she did fight, it was truly beautiful. I've never seen a better right cross, before or since.

One time we were on leave, sipping drinks in this English pub. The Howlies were at the back table, enjoying a couple pitchers, while Peggy was up at the bar, chatting with the barmaid. Many of the bars and pubs back then had female bartenders–filling the gaps with the men off at war. And generally barmaids (which was what a female bartender was called back then) were the sort of girl Pegs got along with–sensible, dependable, and not willing to take shit from any man. So she often enjoyed commiserating with the barmaids while we drank. She used to say she had to be free of us ‘charming gentlemen’ before she wound up blowing things up as erratically as we did. Which was hurtful. Our explosions were very intentional.

Mostly.

So Peggy got to chat about the best ways to hurl drunken idiots out doors and we got to ply Steve with alcohol to see how much booze it would take to make him drunk. (Tragically, we never found out.)

On this particular occasion, Peggy was sitting at the bar when this mountain of a man came in. And I mean huge. Thor-sized. Like the Hulk’s pinker younger brother. And with him came a dozen or so of his closest friends, all locals. (They may also have been poorly disguised orcs. I'm not sure, but I wouldn’t discount it as a possibility after seeing all the nonsense I've seen.) The group of them made their way up to the bar, wedged their way in, and started harassing the barmaid. 

Now, I don’t know what they said. Peggy refused to repeat it. All I know is that one of the larger idiots said something stupid, laughed, and reached out to grope the barmaid. His hand made it about six inches from her chest when Peggy’s fist broke his nose. He hit the floor like a tree falling, and the bar went quiet for a split second before one exceptionally suicidal idiot lunged at Peggy.

Everything went crazy. There were a good few dozen of us 107th guys in the bar, and all of us knew and adored Pegs, so when the mountain-men went after her, every fine man of the 107th went after them. But it turned out that the locals defended their own, and we were pretty evenly matched for numbers. Within seconds, everyone was throwing punches. Bottles were thrown. Dernier used a tablecloth to blind a man and threw him out a window. DumDum used one guy’s fists to hit another guy. I hurled bottlecaps at people’s eyeballs, because it’s fun. (I'm a sniper. We like distance.) Steve tried to wade through the chaos to get to Peggy, but people kept punching him and then clutching their hands in agony, so he got kind of bogged down. 

At the bar, Peggy was demonstrating exactly why she was the 107th’s darling–because she could put a grown man twice her size on the ground in two seconds flat. She knocked out six men; seven more promptly fell in love with her. 

As the chaos began to wind down, most of the locals had either been beaten down or fled, and only the mini-Hulk and a couple others were left, brawling like berserkers. We were just about ready to turn Steve loose on them when the barmaid handed Peggy a stool. Peggy took it, walked up behind where most of us Howlies were still duking it out, and broke the stool over the big guy’s head. 

He went down hard. the rest of them surrendered out of terror. 

(And, possibly, they had also fallen prey to abruptly-in-love-with-Peggy-Carter syndrome. But really, who wasn’t?)

* * *

 

[ _ kaleenjackson _ ](https://kaleenjackson.tumblr.com/) _ asked: I just wanted to say thank you for your fantastic posts. Every day I look forward to what crazy shit you have to say. Do you think you could tell us any stories about meeting any of the Howling Commandos for the first time? _

DumDum Dougan threw a Nazi at me. That’s how we met. It was mid-fight, and I was a little pissed, because I wasn’t expecting an angry German to come flying at my face at that particular moment. But we were a little busy trying to stay alive at that point, so mostly I just swore at DumDum and kept fighting. 

The rest of them I met in the prison camp. DumDum, Gabe, and Morita were all technically members of the 107th, but I didn’t really talk to them at all until we were locked up together. Falsworth was part of a British parachute brigade who wound up in the same camp as we did, and Dernier was part of the French resistance as a spy and explosives expert. We all got tossed in the same cell together because we were the troublemakers of the captured troops. We kept inciting chaos.

Which really backfired on them. Because by putting all the crazies together, they just made it easier for us to conspire.

So we stole some supplies and blew up a Hydra colonel.

They did not like that.

After that we became pretty close. There’s nothing like detonating Nazis to bring friends together.

* * *

 

_ (A/N: Tags for that post are as follows, included because they probably had something to do with the phrasing of the next ask:  _ _ #i headcanon that it was for that reason one of them got pulled for supersoldier experiments#and since bucky was the ringleader#and he'd had too much exposure to Steve#he volunteered to protect the rest of them _ _ ) _

_ anonymous asked:  The story about the howling commandos meeting each other for the first time made me cry. Can you tell us anything more about your time in prison? (Seriously though, this is one of my favorite blogs, I hope you enjoy modding it as much as we do reading it <3) _

Well, calling it a prison was really a hair misleading; it was actually a labor camp. Which is how we had access to the supplies necessary to blow somebody up. Some of the supplies. We stole a lot of stuff. 

I don’t have many stories from there that aren’t incredibly depressing–surprising no one, Nazis are not great at running fun summer camps, but they’re pretty good at causing misery–but nonetheless, we did our best to keep spirits up in the face of adversity. Sometimes we sang.

No, really, we actually did a fair bit of singing. Not loudly, mostly just to keep a steady rhythm as we worked. The guards let us get away with it so long as we kept it quiet. and most of them didn’t speak more than a word or two of English, so they never had any idea what lyrics we were singing.

Once we figured that out, we got inventive. 

It turns out that if you have nothing to think about except how badly you want to get out of Nazi prison and how much you hate Nazis, even the most illiterate of men become poets. We came up with bawdier and bawdier verses for dozens of songs, all increasingly insulting to Hitler, Red Skull, Hydra, and Nazis in general. Old classics like ‘ [ Hitler Has Only Got One Ball’ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqZg36JBBr8) were trotted out alongside our originals, which included ‘Satan’s Favorite Dinner is Nazis and Spam,’ ‘All You Need To Beat A Hydra Is Fire, Fools,’ and ‘Red Skull’s Blue Because His Mother Never Loved Him.’ I’ll admit we sometimes got a little…personal. But to be fair, they were  _ Nazis _ .

We sang some of the songs we made up for the rest of the 107th when we got out, and they were pretty impressed with how vulgar they were. Steve went as red as his uniform and choked on his beer in front of Peggy.

We were very proud of ourselves.

  
  



	27. Family Matters

_ Anonymous asked: My birthday is this weekend... Will you come to my party? I have dogs. _

Well, I don't like parties, but I do like dogs…

I’ll be there.

You probably won’t see me, but don't worry, I’m there. Perks of being a stealthy assassin.

Shut  _ up  _ Clint, I can totally be stealthy!

* * *

_ Anonymous asked: does Tony think of Peter as a son? _

Probably not consciously. He treats him kind of like a son sometimes, but that’s not very unusual for Tony. Tony has to be watched closely or he adopts stray genius children everywhere he goes.

Mostly it’s pretty long distance–he emails and videocalls them, sets up scholarships, funds research, talks them through school problems, introduces them to employers… I know for a fact that at least half of the Starkphone beta testers are sleep-deprived students across the country who Tony has run into at some convention or facility tour and decided to keep. Some of them come to work at Stark Industries eventually, but a fair number go into other fields.

He has a strange ability to pinpoint exactly which kid in any given cluster is an untapped well of talent looking for mentoring. We have a number of bets running on if he’s doing it consciously or not. 

Either way, he does it a lot.

He’s not very cuddly or touchy-feely with them, and he gets hilariously defensive if you poke him about it, but he’s actually a really good mentor, and he does really care. I mean, sometimes he uses the ‘do the exact opposite of what I would do’ method of role modelling, but…

* * *

_ Anonymous asked: Grandpa Bucky, you're the greatest storyteller of them all. I'll make you a cheesecake if you tell us what is the craziest thing you and Tony have done to entertain yourself while on a SHIELD briefing? _

The thing about debriefings is that if you disrupt them, they only go longer. So the trick is entertaining yourself without attracting attention or getting caught. 

That being said, all of the Avengers know Morse code. So initially we would just have quiet conversations–tapping pens, using the glint of light off a watch, blinking–but we had to stop after Nat  told a really good dick joke and Thor couldn’t hold in his laughter, which completely derailed the briefing, because Thor’s laugh is really contagious. (Also because Dr. Banner and Tony got very distracted by Thor’s Allspeak working on a code: how far does that work? Could he read text spit out by an enigma machine? And then science happened. The poor SHIELD peon trying to keep the briefing together was totally forgotten.)

So we stopped having coded conversations, because Nat can't resist dick jokes when the opportunity presents itself, and Thor always laughs at them. We moved on to passing notes, because why not? We’re a group of spies, assassins, supersoldiers and geniuses. And Thor. We can totally slide a bit of paper around without getting caught. We actually still do this all the time, but we’ve moved on to drawings. Each of us draws one of the others as they appeared in the last fight. It gets pretty insulting and really funny very quickly. Tony’s compiling a best-of book to give Steve for his birthday, because Steve likes art. 

So it’s hard to pick just one particular incident, but one of the better ones was the time Tony and I built a tiny little remote controlled robot bug, and I slipped it down Steve’s shirt just before the debriefing started. Fun fact: super senses is  _ all  _ the senses–including touch. Steve is  _ incredibly  _ ticklish. We would wait until he got comfy, then make it move just a little bit, and watch him twitch. Then we’d wait again, move it somewhere else, and again with the twitching. It was pretty great. Steve tries to keep professional during meetings, which is a joke considering who he works with, and watching him spasm and twist and try not to giggle was just. Performance art. 

Afterwards we realized that since Scott can control actual bugs, we wasted a lot of time making a robot one. But it was still worth it. 

* * *

_ Anonymous asked: Murder dad please tell me how to wear combat boots in the summer, am I too weak? _

Maybe, murder child in training. But maybe you are using incorrect technique. 

For one, get decent socks. Science has given the future the gift of many different kinds of sweat-wicking socks. Make use of the gifts science has given you. Also, carry around a spare pair.  If you think you are going to die of heat, take off your sweaty socks and replace with the fresh pair. It makes a world of difference. 

Two, find another way to vent heat. If you're gonna have your feet in boots, be sure you’ve got other body parts that can breathe. I have learned from experience that going outside in full combat gear in the summer is a great way to melt your soul and make you wish you’d never left Siberia. 

Three, keep an icepack in your robot arm. Then, if your friends are dying of heat, you can bestow upon them the Frigid Hand of Blessing, and demand appropriate grenade-shaped offerings to your glory. 

It is possible that my icepack hand has driven me mad with power.

* * *

 

[ _ mtndewhoodies _ ](https://mtndewhoodies.tumblr.com/) _ asked: Bucky quick I need stories about your family to cheer me up about my stepmother!! _

I didn’t have a lot of immediate family, it was just me and my Ma and Becca. 

Dad died when Becca and I were still really little, which wasn't unusual–lots of kids had lost dads in WWI. Becca and I got along pretty well; we were only a couple years apart, and my mom had to work a lot, so Becca and I kinda had to take care of each other.

Becca was a real girly-girl though, so we sometimes had a hard time finding ways to play together that we both enjoyed. Often we wound up playing Fancy-Dress-Lady-General and Soldier-Man. (After we knew Steve, he would sometimes participate as Slightly-Smaller-Soldier-Man, which was not a name he was particularly fond of. But nobody managed to disagree with Becca for long, so he was stuck with it.) Soldier-Man used to get a lot of orders from on high to go to tea parties, which were not exactly his favorite kind of mission.

But he was the dutiful sort, so I endured. 

Let me tell you, Becca  _ loved  _ hearing about Peggy Carter in my letters during the war. 

While my immediate family was pretty small, my extended family was…not. 

There were a lot of Barneses in our area of Brooklyn. I had enough cousins we could not only field a baseball team, we could field a second one and play against ourselves. (The old joke, of course, was that there was a  _ barn  _ full of us.) We weren’t all very close–there were too many of us for that–but we got along in the way family does, when you don't really have a choice about liking somebody, because you're stuck with each other. And we watched each other’s backs. If somebody was short on food, the rest of us would scrape together and invite their kids in for dinner most nights. And hand-me-downs got passed on till there was nothing left but threads, and then  _ those  _ were used for darning holes in other hand-me-downs. 

It came in handy when I got to be friends with Steve. Because if there was one thing Steve could be relied on to do, it was to get in fistfights in some remote location where it’d be a pain for me to find him. Luckily, I had so many cousins scattered around that  _ somebody  _ would almost always spot him doing his best to exhaust his opponent to death with an excellent punching-bag routine, and they’d run and fetch me before anybody died. Most of ‘em wouldn't intervene themselves because they weren’t too fond of Steve–he was terrible at baseball, and he had a weird accent as a kid because he learned Gaelic before he learned English. (A couple of the girls thought he was the sweetest little thing, though, and when  _ they  _ found him fighting, they’d storm right in and break things up. Barnes women are not to be toyed with.) 

But most of them would at least use the family grapevine to let me know I had to come collect my fighting scarecrow. Which was probably a good part of the reason Steve survived to adulthood. 

  
  



	28. Steve and the Deathbike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve goes for a ride on the Deathbike. This chapter begins with one of the regular blog posts, because that's what lead to the Deathbike question.

_ kingofmemes posted: _

_ Steve is officially on vehicle probation. until he learns how to use motorcycles, planes, helicopters and tanks correctly, the only thing he is allowed to use is a bicycle _

_ Posted at 2:35 pm, 1463 notes _

[ _ silverbutterfly17 _ ](https://silverbutterfly17.tumblr.com/) _ asked: Tell us how Steve managed to cause a disaster on his bicycle, only hours after he was banned from using motorized vehicles. _

You must know Steve pretty well, because that is  _ exactly  _ what happened.

The morning after throwing yet another motorcycle at a supervillian, Steve woke up early and decided to go out and get bagels. Not at all unusual, except that his favorite bagel place is in Brooklyn. So naturally Steve decided to just bike there.

Tony keeps a dozen or so pedal bikes in the vehicle garage, and pretty much every one of them is weirder than the one before. One is a concept made by Ferrari; another one is made from bamboo and was a gift from an MIT student whose research he funded. One appears to have some sort of rocket engine attached. With selections like that, you can see why Steve chose the oldest, plainest bike in the group.

What Steve did not know was that this was  _ the Deathbike. _

See, when Tony was 14 and starting at MIT, he wasn’t licensed to drive and needed a way to get around campus quickly. So, like many other college students, he got a bike. A very nice, high-end bike, of course, but otherwise perfectly innocuous. (It was a bit too big for him. He insists it wasn’t, and that he’s  _ not short _ .)

Tony rode it home and painted it black.

Within the first month of owning the Deathbike, Tony ran into two people, was run into three times by other cyclists, and just barely missed being hit by a car. Tony refused to admit that either 1. the bike was cursed or 2. he was just a terrible cyclist, and instead painted a tiny white skull on the side of the bike for every collision, and rode it for the rest of his time at MIT. Somehow, he survived, and no one was seriously injured. (He admits that there may have been a few broken bones. But he paid the medical bills, so it was fine.)

By the time Steve took the bike out, there were twenty-seven little skulls.

Steve knew none of this, and headed out on the sidewalks aboard the Deathbike. He made it a block or two on thankfully empty sidewalks before Tony’s modifications kicked in.

Little 14-year-old madman Stark, drunk on alcohol and puberty, decided that his two-wheeled killing machine didn't go fast enough. So using the genius and lack of foresight the Stark bloodline had given him, he made some changes. And now the Deathbike has a little electric engine that kicks in after a certain speed, which basically increases how fast the bike goes per pedal. Tony says the fastest he was ever clocked on it was about forty mph–but insists he could have made it faster, except he didn't want to make it too bulky.

Steve was doing fifty miles an hour by the time he was six blocks from the Tower.

 

Since Steve is himself, instead of maybe slowing down when he realized how fast he was going, he decided to see how fast he could get. And it turns out that a supersoldier on a bike built by teenage Tony Stark can go plenty damn fast.

 

A traffic cam on the Brooklyn Bridge clocked him at nearly 115 mph.

 

But don't  forget–this is the Deathbike. It earned its name, and would fulfill its mildly inconvenient legacy regardless of who was riding it. 

Also, its tires were never built for that kind of stress. 

Steve turned around the corner of the block where the bagel shop is going some eighty-odd mph (having slowed down to turn), and hit a heap of cardboard. If he’d been going slower, or if the wheels had been in better shape, he might have been able to brake in time. As it was, he was still going pretty fast when he hit it. And since the universe loves to laugh at Steve, the pile of cardboard was shaped pretty much like a ramp.

Steve and the Deathbike went airborne.

Somehow, the early morning commuters failed to notice Captain America hurtling through the sky on the world’s most sadistic pedal-powered monster, so when he landed in the bed of an old metal pickup, nobody checked on him when he didn’t pop right back out. Instead, the Deathbike, Steve, and Steve’s shiny new concussion remained right where they were, in blissful unconsciousness.

When Steve finally woke up, he was somewhere in southern Virginia, and there was a very confused pickup truck driver wondering how the heck he’d wound up with a giant man and a bike in his truck.

We would have made Steve bike back, but we didn't want to tempt fate. Instead we sent a quinjet.

The Deathbike was unscathed.

Steve  is not allowed to use bicycles any more.

* * *

 

[ _ earthzero _ ](https://earthzero.tumblr.com/) _ asked: Holy cow, the Deathbike is intense! I hope Steve is feeling better after the concussion! And I hope your nerves are calming down after what must have been an unsettling day. It seems bikes are out of the question, too. How about roller skates? How much damage could Steve possibly do on a pair of roller skates? _

The concussion was totally gone by the time he woke up. Superhealing has its perks. My nerves, however, are in a constant state of “STEVE NO,” which my therapist describes as “enough to drive anybody batshit.”

After the Deathbike incident, we decided that Steve can’t use anything with wheels. Just to be safe. And then he went out for a walk and accidentally stumbled into and broke up a drug smuggling ring. 

So now we’ve just given up entirely.

  
  



	29. Losing Fights & Cooking

[ _ au-revior-little-biscuit _ ](https://au-revior-little-biscuit.tumblr.com/) _ asked: Hey Bucky? Everyone knows about how the angry blonde toothpick was always getting beat up, but was there ever a time where you stepped in to help Steve and the guy punching him was also stronger than you? If so, what happened? Just curious. _

[ buckykingofmemes ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/) answered:

Sure, that happened. That happened a lot. How do you think I got so good at fighting? The same way Steve did: ~~a mad scientist pumped me full of superjuice~~ by getting into fights and learning what  _ not  _ to do. 

Stevie and I learned a lot of ways to not win a fistfight.

Let’s just say it was a good thing Steve’s Ma was a nurse. 

But here’s how most of Steve’s fights went:

  1. Someone is rude, bigoted, unfair, or mean.  Given that this was Brooklyn, ‘someone’ might be up to 1/3 of the population.  (Also, sometimes they just didn't like Irish people.)
  2. Steve sasses them. Contrary to popular belief, he usually didn't open with a punch, partially because he often couldn’t reach high enough. Stevie was pretty short.
  3. In response to the sass, his opponent takes a swing. Steve fights back. Since anyone in good health over the age of twelve was probably stronger than Steve, things generally went downhill quickly after this point. Which isn't  to say that Stevie didn’t give as good as he got–he’s always had that tactical mind. 



Once I saw him throw an alley cat at a guy. The cat was fine. The guy was not. (Neither was Steve. He was allergic to cats.)

  1. I follow the familiar sounds of Steve getting his tiny little butt kicked. Such sounds include, but are not limited to: punching sounds; requests to keep fighting, because he could take it; spitting blood (often at his opponents); crashing noises; clothing tearing, and the distant echo of Sarah Rogers’ Disapproval Face.
  2. I join the fight. At this point, things will either go one of two ways: 1. I open a fresh can of whoopass, and whoever was beating on Steve quickly learns the error of their ways (assuming they had the mental capacity to learn things. Steve really knew how to pick em.) Sometimes Steve helped with the asskicking, but other times he was too busy making the pavement red. 



Or option 2. I join the fight, but Steve and I are still overwhelmed (Steve really knew how to pick em.) Which happened…more often than I’d care to admit. If that was the case, we went down fighting, took our beating, and followed the sound of the Disapproval Face back home to get our injuries patched up. Steve was the perfect height to lean on back then. Too bad he had to go and get giant-sized. Now I have to make him piggyback me when im limping, instead of just using his shoulder as a crutch.

Eventually a lot of the locals learned that it just wasn’t worth it to mess with Steve. He was too damn stubborn to back down, and even if you could take the both of us, we’d make you regret trying.  And also once I finished puberty it was a lot harder to beat me in a fight. I was pretty well-known as a boxing champ by then.

Plus, if you ran into Sarah Rogers later, you’d get the Face. Not sure how she knew who’d been punching Stevie, since we never told her, but she did. Somehow she  _ always  _ did.

* * *

 

_ Anonymous asked: Bucky, who's a better cook, Steve or you? With super-soldier appetites, I bet you go through a lot of grub. During the War, in the field, it must have been hard to get enough to eat. What's the weirdest/worst thing you ate back then? _

I’ll admit that most of my cooking skill is a modern thing; I picked it up as a hobby, and also because superheroes go through food so fast that my options were either to start cooking or go raid Thor’s poptart stash. And i’m stupid, not suicidal. 

So back during the War, my cooking skills basically came down to heating prepared food and cooking meat over a fire. Not a lot of use in a modern kitchen. Steve, on the other hand, learned to cook from his Ma, because he was home sick so often, and wanted ways to help out around the house.

Steve is actually a pretty good cook–if you don’t mind really mild food. His supersenses mean that spices come across a lot stronger to him than they do to most people, and while his healing factor fights them off just fine, he still gets pretty hilariously red in the meantime. I don’t have the same problem, because my serum’s not quite as strong, and because I had a higher tolerance for spicy foods to start with. 

The other factor in Steve’s tendency to make pretty bland food is the fact that both of us grew up very poor in the Depression, when spices were very much a luxury. Our mothers made do with what they could, but it wasn’t easy, and we all got used to pretty unseasoned foods. 

The Depression is also the reason for the other half of your question: the worst foods I've ever eaten. Because you know what was all the rage back then? 

_ Gelatin _ .

Oh yes. The world’s most inedible edible foodstuff. Back before the War, jello was cheap, new, and people were putting all sorts of awful things into it. I was at a ‘dinner party’ once where they had a jello dish that included canned sauerkraut, lemon jello, pimentos, and onion. It was easily one of the worst things I've ever tasted, and DumDum once stuck his toe in my mouth while I was sleeping. (It was not a prank that went over well, and also what sparked off the Red Socks Incident. But that’s a story for another time.) 

During the War, the worst food was tragically not a single incident, but a recurring nightmare. It also included satan’s snot. They called it ‘creamed chipped beef on toast,’ which was a terrible name for something that did not contain cream or chips, and barely had beef. Ingredients were plain gelatin, canned corned beef, canned peas, vinegar, and lemon juice on the hardest slab of bread around. It looked like it had already been digested once by something prehistoric, who had then spit it back up.

That’s was why most of us recognized that particular dish as ‘shit on a shingle.’ Or SOS, for short. As in ‘save our stomachs.’

On SOS days at the mess hall, Steve ate like a king, if the king was the sort of monster who actually liked gelatin. Nobody wanted to actually eat the stuff, so Steve got everybody’s servings. 

There’s something terribly wrong with that man.

  
  



	30. Summer, Birthdays & Medical

_ anonymous asked: I hope Steve had a good birthday! He doesn't look too bad for being almost 100. _

Are you implying that people who are a hundred years old look bad?? Because as a centenarian, I take issue with that. I look fantastic.

Steve had a good birthday. Though maybe we should have put less candles on that cake. Turns out he’s pretty flammable.

Don’t worry, everything is fine.

Well. Mostly everything.

He might be short an eyebrow.

* * *

 

[ _ unamedwatcher _ ](http://unamedwatcher.tumblr.com/) _ asked: How on earth did you guys survive summers without air conditioning? Mine went out two days ago and I'm about five minutes away from giving myself an ice cube enema just to make it through the heat. _

It wasn't fun, that's for sure. Though I'll admit I never quite got to the point where  _ that  _ sounded like a good idea. 

Mostly we acclimated–-humans do this neat thing where our bodies can adapt to hot environments, but nowadays people just jump from air conditioned environment to air conditioned environment and don’t build up that tolerance by staying in the heat. But back then, we just got used to it. That only goes so far, though. 

The summer of 1936 was a nasty one. I mean, horribly, terribly, melt-your-bones hot. Nobody wanted to do anything, it was just so hot. The whole city just wanted to find a shady spot and lie still until the heatwave passed.  People who had fire escapes off their apartments would sleep on them at night, so they wouldn’t have to be indoors, where it was even hotter and there was no moving air. Neighborhoods broke open fire hydrants and cooled off that way–I once saw a man in a three piece business suit walk right into the spray from a hydrant, looking blissful as anything. Some people carried umbrellas or parasols. People found bodies of water and got in them–rivers, ponds, public fountains, which was neither safe nor sanitary. Places that sold cold drinks were packed, and vendors selling shaved ice on the streets sold out. 

But the best thing was the pools. That summer, the WPA opened 11 enormous new public outdoor swimming pools across the city. Back then, they were the peak of technology. Four of them were in Brooklyn, and Stevie and I tried out all of them. It was  _ the  _ social site of the season, so I was in fine form. 

It was great–Stevie could swim pretty well, despite not having much muscle mass, and the chemicals didn't bother his asthma too much. Whenever the two of us weren’t working, we were at one of those pools. Really, it seemed like most of the city was in the water trying to cool off. 

One thing we didn’t have? Sunscreen. That wasn’t really around until the War. I'm a bit darker than Steve, and even I was lobster red after the first few days. I made it work–red is my color.

Stevie, though. Steve was so red he could stop traffic.

* * *

 

_ anonymous asked: Bucky, can you tell us about a time you had to force Steve to go to medical because he thinks he's pretty much invincible? _

My favorite times is when Steve is unconscious. Or really punch drunk. Because then I can just drag him into medical. And I don’t really have to worry about brain damage because 1. he’s already an idiot and 2. healing factor.

(Which is not to say that his healing factor is enough to keep him out of medical. It’s not. He still has to go in, no matter what he says. The only ones who get out of medical on the healing factor excuse are Wade and Logan. And that’s just because they’re too much of a pain to bother with. So Steve still has to go to medical. )

You would think being raised by a nurse would teach him to respect medical. But no. 

He broke his hand–his whole damn hand, not just the fingers–punching a solid concrete wall a month ago. He wasn't aiming for the wall. (He  _ claims _ .) He was aiming for a doombot, which dodged, and he hit the wall instead. It may have been the only doombot ever made with a survival instinct. If only Steve could have borrowed that after Clint shot the doombot’s head off.

Since Steve is Steve, and he thinks Erskine and howard injected him with adamantium instead of superjuice, he just kept fighting with his broken hand. And he kept forgetting it was broken. (And yelling swearwords over the comms every time he punched something with it.  _ Language _ , Steve.) 

So afterwards, all of us knew he was injured–it was pretty hard to miss, what with the swearing and the swelling. If the universe was kind, or if Steve was less stubborn, he would have accepted the inevitable and just gone to medical. Obviously he did not do that. Instead, he started doing the ‘ _ I'm just fine my hands are always this weird looking Bucky what are you talking about’  _ routine. I think he was just planning on setting the bones himself, though I really don’t want to know  _ how  _ exactly he planned to do that. I was fixing to just grab him and haul him off. 

I guess he could see it in my expression, because he made a break for it, and tried to grab hold of Tony as he was taking off. Except Tony didn’t see him coming, and the two of them only made it about twelve feet up before Steve throwing off Tony’s balance managed to crash them both. 

The Iron Man is pretty heavy. Steve wound up under it. 

He broke his other hand.

After that he went to medical quietly.

(He was not quiet for long. There’s no greater force of irritation than bedridden Steve who can’t use his hands to do things. He gets bored and then I start really missing being cryofrozen.)

  
  



	31. Ethanol and Education

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be warned that the second half of this includes minor details from Spider-Man Homecoming. Nothing related to the plot, though, just a funny side bit.

_anonymous  asked: Have you ever considered ethanol to get Steve drunk?_

 

well, we never used just plain old ethanol, but im pretty sure some of the hooch we got our hands on during the war was pretty damn close. 

it still didnt get steve drunk though. 

no, the closest we came to pure ethanol was with a bottle of vodka gabe jones bartered off a troop of russian infantrymen. it was easily some of the most unpalatable booze ive ever consumed, and i grew up during the prohibition.

we finished the bottle in one night.

it was a good night.

we’d just come off an op, and we had another the next day, but for about 24 hours or so, we had time to kill. and in the interest of science, we decided to make yet another valiant attempt at getting steve drunk.

we were buttoned up in a slightly-bombed farmhouse the army had taken over as a barracks. we ate our dinner, got out the cards, and started playing the Game With No Name. 

the Game With No Name was the only card game we howlies really ever played. it had started as poker, but after none of us could agree on the rules, we’d compromised, and wound up with a form of poker that would never fly in Vegas. after that, a couple cards went missing while we were on a long op, so we tweaked the rules again. then happy sam had to agree to a rules change after he lost a bet, half the cards got water-damaged, and we tried explaining how to play to another troop and things got confused, and…well, the Game With No Name was its own phenomena, and the rules for using it as a drinking game were…complicated. but mostly, everyone had to drink a lot.

which was bad. because that was some very strong vodka. 

within an hour or so, steve and i were the only sober ones left. steve because of his racehorse metabolism, and me because i was winning the Game With No Name. (and also my racehorse metabolism, which steve did not know about.) but the rest of the howlies were drunk. very, very drunk.

so stevie and i decided we should probably try to get them into their bunks, since we had a mission the next day.

morita was easy, except that he had decided twenty minutes into the game that he was Done With Pants. one of us would have made him put them back on, except he somehow made them vanish within 30 seconds of taking them off. so he was in full combat gear on top, hat and all, combat boots and socks on bottom, and nothing but boxers in between. 

stevie and i put him on a top bunk, pulled his boots off, and he was snoring immediately. 

happy sam was harder. we put him in a bunk and thought we were done. 

we were not. 

dernier was cleaning the stove. he was acting stone sober, except that he was scrubbing away at what must have been decades of soot caked to the kitchen woodstove and humming ‘god save the queen.’ he was making no visible progress, and when the house had been bombed a cinderblock had smashed in the center of the stove. but he seemed fine, so steve and i figured we’d leave him to it. 

we turned around and happy sam was out of bed. we put him back in his bunk. 

falsworth had gotten into dernier’s pack. dernier’s pack contained exclusively explosives and snacks, so this was very concerning. he appeared to be assembling some sort of bomb, except that it was all wired to a can of spam instead of any actual explosive. i had to promise him i’d use it on the nazis before he let steve and i dump him in a bed.  

(a week later i used that can of spam to clobber a hydra agent. im a man of my word.)

happy sam was up again. we put him back in his bunk. 

it took us a bit to find gabe jones, since he’d crawled into the back of a wardrobe and was fast asleep. he seemed comfortable, burrowed down in farm dresses and coveralls. we left him as he was.

by the time we were done with that, we expected happy sam would be up again. he wasn’t–he’d dragged dernier to the sofa, and the both of them were passed out, covered in soot. 

dumdum was the only one left, and he was a floppy, cheerful drunk. he kept insisting he wanted to get up and go do something, so when steve and i dropped him in his bunk, we wrapped his blanket around him so snugly that he couldn’t work his arms out. 

“bucky,” he stage-whispered at me, grinning like a loon.. “right now im a caterpillar. but in the morning–”  

he thought he was being quiet. 

he wasn’t.

“–im gonna be a beautiful butterfly.”

and so he was.

 

(he wasn’t. all of them were incredibly hung over. the mission was pure torture. i heard dernier begging for somebody to just shoot him and have done with it. it was easily the worst five miles of hiking they’d ever had, and steve whistled ‘star spangled man with a plan’ the whole time, because he’s a jerk.)

(it was pretty funny though.)

* * *

 

**There will be a SPOILER (not of any significant plot points, but of a minor humorous detail) from Spider-Man Homecoming under this line.**

 

* * *

_anonymous  asked: So I know Steve is in those school detention videos, but do they ever try to get you to be in any of them too?_

 

 

they  _tried_. they did not succeed.

this occurred for two reasons. 1. steve made those videos while i was still with hydra, so i wasnt around then. and after i came back and they asked me to do them, i watched steves videos and saw how dumb he looked. so i passed. 

and 2. steve only did them in the first place because he got blackmailed. 

so back during the war, steve had a reputation among the howlies as being terrible with women. which he was. so every so often when we were on leave, one of us would get it into our heads to try and help stevie develop some sort of game, in hopes that we would have to listen to him pine for peggy carter less. 

he did a  _lot_ of pining. 

we were all hanging out at a bar near camp after a stressful operation, killing time before the next transport turned up. morita was running late because he was getting a stark update for his radio kit, but the rest of us were already a few drinks in and well on our way to heckling steve into doing something dumb. 

(we didnt have tv back then, so we had to get our entertainment somewhere. and let me tell you, steve is better than the kardashians in terms of just-cant-look-away decision making.)

so dumdum had convinced steve that he had the perfect line, and all steve would have to do was walk up to some dame and say it. steve obviously wasnt interested in anybody but pegs, but he admitted that a bit of practice just holding conversation with a lady would probably do him some good.  dumdum pointed out a lovely dame with long brown hair and a WASP uniform sitting up at the bar, whispered the line in steve’s ear (because he didnt trust the rest of us with his perfect line) and sent steve off. 

we watched as steve made his way over and sat down. he’d never looked more awkwardly enormous as he did wedged into the bar stool next to that tiny dame. he flagged down the bartender, ordered a couple drinks, and turned to deliver dumdum’s line.

except that right then, the bartender slid the drinks down the bar to him, and his arm caught them both as he turned. 

so he delivered the line and then promptly doused the dame in two pints of terrible beer. 

that’s when morita showed up. and just as the lady delivering a really lovely slap across that chiseled-as-rushmore jawline, jim morita says:

“what the hell is steve doing with my  _wife_??”

because it turned out his wife was a civilian pilot who’d joined the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, and happened to be the transport pilot we were waiting for. none of us even knew he was married. he and his wife both kept their rings on their tags under their uniforms. her name was jenny, and she thought the whole thing was pretty damn funny.

she and steve both refused to divluge what exactly the line had been. but it must have been pretty bad, because when jenny and jim morita’s son found steve after the war, he used it as blackmail to get steve to do those videos. turns out he’s a high school principal somewhere in queens. and he’s on some sort of educational board that makes those things. 

but morita never had any blackmail on me to pass along, so i got out home free. 

_(A/N: If you haven't seen Homecoming, all you need to know is that 1. there are Cap educational videos used in Parker's school on topics like detention, exercise, and being healthy. They're very cheesy. and 2. His school is run by Principal Morita.)_


	32. TV, Nights Out, and General Incompetence

_anonymous  asked: Do you ever watch tv? Which are better, modern tv shows or old time radio dramas?_

 

they’re very different things. modern tv–or at least a good chunk of it–is focused around scandal, which isnt something i really care about. also theres lots of dramatic background noises to increase how dramatic things are, but mostly i really cant take it seriously. i like to watch fantasy or scifi stuff, though. and steve and i like to watch sports. (we’ve been very carefully keeping him away from any extreme sports and the xgames. the last thing we need is steve trying to use the [Deathbike ](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/post/162285399941/tell-us-how-steve-managed-to-cause-a-disaster-on)to do stunts).

i like to watch cutthroat kitchen. it’s basically exactly what happens when more than one avenger tries to use the kitchen at the same time, except i dont have to help clean up afterwards. 

the old radio dramas were fun. campy by modern standards, but we used to really enjoy them. tony was nice enough to get old recordings for stevie and i, so we could hear how things ended for our favorite characters. be warned: tony is terrible to listen to radio with. he gets easily distracted and starts talking. 

steve and i used to have HUGE arguments about what certain characters looked like as kids. he would draw what he thought they looked like, and i would draw what i thought they looked like, and steve would always win because nobody ever looks like what i draw. humans dont work like that. 

i am not good at drawing.

* * *

_anonymous  asked: Did Tony and Clint take you bar-hopping yet?_

 

they did. 

the problem with bar-hopping with tony and clint is that both of them are human. pretty exceptional ones, but their livers are pretty standard issue. 

dont get me wrong–it was a fun time. but it takes some powerful stuff to get me drunk. regular bars arent prepared for someone with my metabolism. 

not that theyre really prepared for tony and clint either–but nobody really is. not even me. 

turns out that tony’s a fantastic ballroom dancer, if you can get him to the level of drunk necessary to convince him it’s a good idea. apparently maria stark insisted it was something he needed to know how to do, along with playing piano, speaking six languages, and knowing which fork to use. 

clint, on the other hand, is a king of the boogie and the line dance. and he barely needs any alcohol at all to get going. he’s a one man dance machine, whether you want a dance machine or not. i learned some of what clint claimed were ‘hot dance moves’ and tony said were ‘an abomination.’

also the worm.

it was a pretty good night.

i wound up carrying both of them back to the tower. 

* * *

_anonymous  asked: What if Steve doesn't know how to work a parachute but is too embarrassed/stubborn to admit it?_

 

 

oh, that little shit knows how to use a parachute. that’s part of what makes him so dang terrible. he knows full well how to work a chute. he’s just a moron. 

we’ve had this conversation a lot.

‘its stealthier, buck,’ he tells me.  
‘it wont be stealthy when they hear me yelling at you all the goddam way down, steve.’

'im superhuman, i can survive it!’ he insists.  
'well, that’ll come in handy when im kicking your butt for being such a dumbass.’

'im afraid of heights,’ he blatantly lies.  
'then why’d you get so freakin tall??’

'i just don’t like parachutes, though, buck,’ he says, like that’s any sort of excuse.   
'and i don’t like it when you die from stupidity, but that’s never once stopped you from trying. now strap the fucking chute on before i ziptie you in a crate and ship you back to peggy.’

  


 


	33. A Snake and some Boots

 

 

_anonymous  asked: The world sucks right now. Can I please get a hug? And an embarrassing story about Steve to take my mind off things?_

 

i’m delegating my hugging duties to dogs. to all dogs. don’t worry, they’re great at it. discuss the terms of your hug with the next dog you meet. he’ll know what you’re talking about. (if you’re allergic to fur, i recommend a snake. they are also excellent huggers.)

and since im talking about snakes anyways, here’s a snake story. i didn’t get to see this one first hand, but us 107th guys spent a bit of time with the Star-Spangled Showgirls after the rescue, and a lovely lady named molly told me about this. 

molly’s still around, and she tells this story much better than me, but you’ll have to make do with my version.

when the star-spangled show was on tour, they went all over the country, hitting every major city they could, and some not-so-major cities in between. in the major cities, they had proper opera houses and concert venues to use. in smaller towns…not so much. school gyms, community centers, and public park bandstands all hosted steve’s spangly ass. they found dressing rooms where they could, but often they had to share, since the show included some fifty-odd female performers, and the only male actors were steve and hitler. (…the guy who played hitler. the real hitler was pretty busy being a huge jerkwad somewhere in germany at that point.) so sometimes steve and fake-adolph wound up with a curtained-off corner of the girl’s dressing room.

which was pretty much the setup in nowheresville, arizona. they were in a community center, and the dressing room was an indoor tennis court. steve and the hitlerganger were chatting and waiting for the girls to give them the ‘we’re decent, you can come out’ all clear, when the screaming started. 

you ever hear fifty terrified showgirls screaming? it’s a miracle that none of the windows shattered. 

anyway, steve and hitler came charging out to see what was happening. half the girls were standing on top of the makeup tables and chairs, mostly ringed around one corner. steve had had the presence of mind to grab his shield, and he pushed his way (gently, because he’s polite to ladies) through the crowd to see what was up.

in the corner was a snake. steve swears it was five feet if it was an inch. molly says it was two feet, max.  

steve, having no idea what to do but doomed to heroism anyway, did what steve always does when he’s stymied: he threw his shield at it. 

well, not  _at_ it. technically, his shield landed on top of it, so that it was trapped in the concave part. steve jumped after and held the shield down so it couldn’t get out. crisis averted!

crisis  _not_  averted. this was steve’s original kite shield, not the dome shield howard made him. which meant that the snake very easily slid out the open side, and promptly bit steve in the hand.

steve screamed. a window shattered from the pitch. (or at least, a window shattered when molly tells the story. steve says she’s lying, but he also gets really, really red, so…) 

as steve contemplated his imminent death by snake venom, ruby, who was from arizona, stepped up and grabbed the snake. it let go of steve, and she stood there, holding it, until steve opened his eyes. 

molly said she’s never saw a better ‘really  _very_  unimpressed’ face than ruby’s right then. 

ruby held up the snake and said, ‘steven. this is a milk snake. they’re harmless. you just scared the daylights out of this poor thing.’ and then she made steve take the snake and carry it outside. 

molly says steve held that snake the way most girls would hold a dead rat, but by the time they found a suitable spot to release it, he’d made friends and decided to name it gary. 

steve watched gary slide off into the underbrush. and then he turned around and realized he was surrounded by partially-dressed showgirls, many of whom were still in their underwear, and went bright, flaming red.

 

* * *

_[ebonyheartnet](https://ebonyheartnet.tumblr.com/) asked: Muder dad, I have a not so little brother who likes murder strut (and run after small jet-powered children) in 6" heels, but he will not teach me his secrets._

practice and nazi science, my friend. i don’t recommend the nazi science route though. bad call. 

when you walk in heels, it’s tempting to put your whole foot down at once like you do with flats–or like you would with wedges. there’s a bit of a gentle roll to it, and if you have a single continuous sole, that’s okay.  but actually with heels you want to hit heel first, then toe–you should hear that two-stage click sound as the front and back of your foot impact separately. also, you want to keep your weight really poised; your spine straight but not stiff, and your weight more on your toe than your heel; your heel is going to be wobblier. think of something pulling upwards from the top of your head and between your shoulderblades.  if you can, do heeled boots–weakness in the ankle is what gets people a lot of the time, and even short boots will be more stable. 

if you want that hip sway, walk on a line like you’re on a balance beam. lions do this–they place their paws all along the same axis. stepping into the same centerline will push your hips side to side as you walk. it is indeed very murder-strut-y. 

when you run in heels, you run on tiptoe–your actual heel pretty much never contacts the ground. same with walking on grass–it’s exhausting, but you literally balance on just the balls of your feet so your stiletto doesn’t puncture the ground.  when you kick in heels, you kick stiletto first–otherwise whats even the point of wearing knife shoes. 

beauty is pain. and pain is heels. 

source: drunken shenanigans. so many drunken shenanigans. tony got science involved, and pepper provided expertise. steve is weirdly good at the can-can in heels, just for the record. 

you can’t know this many badass ladies who fight in heels and not have drunken conversations on how exactly they pull it off. they are a source of wonder and mystery, and the drunkvengers are determined to someday discover the secrets of heelfighting.


	34. Projectiles & Accents

_[palewolfchild](https://palewolfchild.tumblr.com/) asked: How do you throw throwing knives properly?_

 

well, first off you need a good throwing knife. knives are like people: most of them are good for one thing but not for others, like steve with throwing shields and steve with applying basic common sense. or like thor with electrocuting things and eating spicy foods. or clint with shooting arrows and basically any other facet of human life. 

anyway, a good throwing knife will be quite sharp on the point but blunted along the sides–sticks in the target but doesn’t cut your hands. the point and blade should be pretty thick, and the fewer perforations in the blade the better. throwing knives have to withstand a hard impact without breaking, so you want a decent quality knife, and the heavier it is (within limits) the less force you’ll need on your throw. 

you’ll want a good target to learn with, something big and soft enough that you’ll hit it and that your knife will embed so you know where you hit, but not so soft the knives fall out. deadpool may volunteer for this job. do not take him up on it. the commentary is not worth it.

grip the tip of the knife vertically between the pad of your thumb and the side of your index fingers. hold it firmly enough that it won’t slide in your grip but not too hard. 

stand with the foot on the side of your throwing hand pointed at your target, spine straight. start close to the target (another reason not to use deadpool–blood splatters farther than you think) and work your way back as you figure things out. the biggest part is learning to throw with enough force and rotation so the pointy end sticks in your target. it’ll take time, and there’s really no shortcut for just putting in the practice hours. 

if this does not work out for you, i recommend grenades for all your low-accuracy distance combat needs. 

* * *

 

 

_[onedragontorulethemall](https://onedragontorulethemall.tumblr.com/) asked: Any stories involving Steve and Gaelic? There's a batch of lemon sugar cookies in exchange._

 

well, stevie spoke gaelic–irish, if you wanna be technical–before he spoke anything else–it’s what his ma spoke at home. and until he was about three, their neighbor, old mrs. mckenna, was the one who babysat him while mrs sarah was at work, and she tended to talk to herself in irish nearly constantly. so he heard more irish than english as a baby. he was pretty sickly too, so he was rarely allowed out to play with the other kids, and by the time he  _was_  healthy enough, he’d developed a strong accent. plus he would slip into irish if he didn’t know the word for something. 

he got teased a lot for it, since being irish wasn’t exactly popular, and he was tiny to boot. but that never slowed him down–he wasn’t quite a people person, but he always stood up for the little guy (when he could find a littler guy, anyway) and that won him some allies on the playground. by the time we became friends, he’d gotten enough english down that he rarely slipped into irish, but the accent was still there. for some reason, he really struggled with my name–he kept calling me “Ucky,” which drove me nuts, so he called me “Cearc” instead, which he refused to translate. im still not convinced he wasn’t calling me Ucky on purpose. that’d be very steve. but eventually exposure to the us Barneses meant he started picking up our brooklyn accent, and for a while, the two accents combined to make him nearly incomprehensible.

there was a blissful year when he was about six where it was really hard for him to pick fights with people because nobody could understand him. it didn’t stop him, but it sure slowed him down. 

 it was a good year. 

by the time he hit his teens, he’d mostly outgrown both accents, though the brooklyn still shows up if you get him mad enough. ask him about the anti-vaxxers if you want a demonstration–that always gets him going. just be prepared to sit through a rant of no less than 38 minutes and possibly join him at a protest sometime. 

the irish, on the other hand, only really shows up when he’s tired. or actually already asleep. the other day he took a couch nap, and i heard him saying “ Tá sé breá, Buck. Tá sciatháin ag an sciath, déanfaimid talamh díreach sna prátaí bruite.” in his sleep. Jarvis translated for me, and it turns out what he was saying was basically  _“it’s fine buck, the shield has wings now, we’ll just land in the boiled potatoes.”_  which just goes to show that he’s still jumping off stuff with no parachute, even in his sleep.

 terrible. 

* * *

_(tons of thanks to[@chromalogue](https://tmblr.co/m3kaQ4lDQ0vSJt-OQoRGZUg), who helped me by figuring out the irish! I am not good with languages, we should all be grateful that there are lovely people to help me.)_


	35. Pets, Ink, and a Very Sticky Spider

_(Edit: New section added after pets question)_

  

_Anonymous said to[buckykingofmemes](http://buckykingofmemes.tumblr.com/): Does Tony let you have any pets in the tower or does he threaten to take all of you knives and guns away if you bring it up?_

 

When I moved in, he had a hard ‘No Pets’ policy, and then a month later, he  brought the bots over from California, and all of us smelled weakness. Tony’s got a soft spot the size of the Hulkbuster.

Nat was the first: her girl Liho, a little black sootstain from Hell, turned up in the kitchen one day, and none of knew where she’d come from. She’s just as quiet and sneaky as Nat is, with a creaky little meow and claws like a tiger. We have no idea how long Nat had her before the rest of us found out. It may have been years. Tony’s a genius, so he made complaining noises but did not actually threaten the Black Widow’s cat. 

Clint knows a good shot when he sees one, so as soon as Tony had gotten over the cat thing, Lucky turned up. And Lucky loves everyone, grouchy billionaires included, so he won over Tony without much trouble. And if that wasn’t enough, he met Nick Fury and they instantly bonded over one-eyed badass things, so now Tony can’t kick Lucky out because 1. Nick Fury would kill him and 2. Tony secretly loves Lucky back.

Recently, Tony also acquired a cat. His name is Mr. Stank. Don’t listen to Tony on this one. 

Sam has an undetermined quantity of pigeons. Sometimes they come inside, which is basically like having a hurricane of feathers come blasting through the common room. Tony hates it--he always winds up with down in his beard, but somehow a state-of-the-art pigeon coop wound up on the roof anyways. It’s self-cleaning. Sam literally took a bullet for Tony a week later as thanks.

(It was in his arm, he’s fine.)

Backup showed up one day, and through a really complicated series of events in which 1. He was tangled up in a Captain America tee shirt 2. Steve vanished for a high-stealth mission without warning, and was incommunicado 3. Backup is really  _really_ good at frisbee, we mistakenly assumed Steve had somehow gotten turned into a dog. 

I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is how we live. It could happen. 

Backup is a smart dog. Like, suspiciously smart—I’m still not convinced he’s not a shapeshifter who got stuck. But we only realized he wasn’t Steve when Steve himself showed up in the tower, back from the op. And even then, we had to show Tony both Steve and the dog together to convince him that Backup was just a regular dog, and by then we had no choice but to keep him. 

(I have some really great footage of Tony getting into an argument with Backup-as-Cap. It’s incredibly one-sided, and somehow Tony still lost.)

 

* * *

 

_anonymous   asked: Bucky, if you don't mind my asking, what in the world was Tony arguing with Backup about?_

 Whether or not it was a good idea to put a rocket booster on Sam’s jetpack. Tony said yes, Backup said no. (Technically, Backup said nothing, on account of he’s a dog and can’t talk, but that didn't stop Tony from assuming that silence meant ‘Cap’ was disagreeing with him.) 

For the record, Sam and i were both in favor. Sam thought it’d be fun, and I thought it’d be funny to watch Sam burn the back of his pants off, which is 1000% what would have happened. But neither of us joined the argument, because watching Tony argue with a dog was just too entertaining.   
Tony claims that backup has very expressive eyes. It’s true, but I don’t know what the hell kinda puppy dog eyes gave Tony enough material to argue with for a half-hour straight. 

* * *

 

 _[ **palewolfchild**](https://palewolfchild.tumblr.com/) asked: _ _dear bucky, have you discovered temporary tattoos yet?_

 

My friend, all tattoos are temporary when you have superhealing. 

But if you’re asking about the purple butterfly tramp stamp that appeared on Clint, which he didn’t notice for a full week, then no.

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

 

* * *

 

_Anonymous asked: Yes hi hello i will give you all the brownies and fluffy blankets i have for a story about peter please_

Well, the bitty bug isn’t around much–I understand he has school stuff and also spends most of his time fighting a hilarious menagerie of animal-themed villains–but I was around the first time he met most of the Avengers. Tony had everyone show up in the common room so he could introduce us. 

Parker’s great, but let me tell you, that kid has absolutely no chill. I mean, he can fake it for about thirty seconds, and then he goes full fanboy mode. The introduction to Steve was roughly 50/50 ‘sorry about the shield thing’ and ‘can you sign everything I own please.’ He shook hands with Thor and the whole time his face was clearly going ‘ _I did not know they made people this big,’_  and that was promptly followed by  _absolute terror_  when meeting Natasha. Smart kid. 

He pretty obviously had no idea who Clint was, and Sam started snarking him right off the bat. But I guess Scott had told him about how they’d first met, so Peter had some snappy comebacks about who exactly wins in a fight between a bird and a bug, which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

And Then tony introduced him to Dr. Banner, and Parker got so flustered about meeting “one of the greatest scientists of our era” that he accidentally turned on his sticky hands and could not turn them off. Which is a thing he has I guess?? All I know is that an awkwardly enthusiastic handshake got pretty hilarious when Peter realized how long he’d had hold of Bruce’s hand and tried to yank his hand back. Because Peter has superstrength and sticky hands.

And Dr. Banner does not. 

(at least not as himself, anyway.)

So Peterbird yanked his hand back, and poor Dr. Banner was yanked forward, and the two of them toppled over. And then they tried to get up, but their hands were still stuck together–and Peter had tried to brace Dr. Banner when they fell, so his left hand was stuck to Bruce’s chest. So mostly they were just flopping around on the carpet like landed fish. Peter was apologizing so much I’m shocked that he didn’t asphyxiate, and Dr. Banner was trying not to laugh at him. 

The rest of us were cackling like lunatics, and Tony was being quite offended that Peter hadn’t geeked out about meeting  _him_.

It was a pretty good first impression.  

 


	36. Apples, Apocaplypses, and Advice

_[Konoto](https://konoto.tumblr.com/)  asked: do you think _ _S_ _teve and_ _T_ _ony are a_ _l_ _ike because of all they trouble they get into?_

 

It’s the trouble-seeking-ability and the stubbornness, mostly. And honestly only about 50% of the trouble either of them gets into is intentional–the rest of it just sort of  _happens._  Doc Strange has been looking into curses and hexes that might make them some sort of chaos-beckoning nexus. Separately is bad enough. Together, it’s pretty much a guaranteed unnatural disaster. 

Pepper and Rhodey and Sam and I have an agreement where we try to keep them apart unless the city is already on fire. At that point we figure they can’t make it much worse. 

(Please note that I said _much_ worse. They  _will_  make it at least a little worse. Try not to worry, citizens! Tony Stark, Patron Saint of Explosions, and Steven “Murderfrisbee” Rogers are here to help! And bicker with each other!)

It’s a little unfortunate, because they clearly enjoy heckling each other a lot, but the destructive feedback loop is too powerful. In the name of safety, sanity, and minimal collateral damage, they must be restricted to no more than 30 minutes of face-to-face insulting banter a day. Anything more than that might cause an apocalypse. 

* * *

 

_Kingofmemes posted:_

_An apple a day keeps the doctor away, unless the doctor is 1. Iron Man or 2. the Hulk. Throwing apples at those doctors just annoys them._

 

* * *

 

 

_[Trianglegoddess](https://trianglegoddess.tumblr.com/) asked: technically speaking though an apple a day keeps anyone away if you throw it hard enough._

 

Uh, I’m sorry, but have you ever tried to fastball an apple at the Hulk?? It does not keep him away. It just gets him covered in apple bits and makes him madder. And you better hope somebody’s nearby to fly you to safety, cause Hulk does not like being sticky, and he will come after you. And I have yet to find anything that can stop an angry Hulk. If you have some sort of magic apple that does the job, please let me know. I would give my left arm for a Hulk-stopping apple. He’s still holding a grudge about the whoopie cushion incident. 

Run far. Run fast. Try to find a puppy to use as a peace offering. 

* * *

_Anonymous asked: continuing on with the trend of "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" questions, would it work seven times as well on tony since he has seven doctorates?_

 

No, it doesn’t work on him at all. Not even if you use seven apples. It just gets apple bits in the joints of the Iron Man armor, and then he has to go walk through a carwash. and he grouches over the comms the whole time.

And if you start throwing apples at him outside the suit, he just eats them. He likes fruit. But he’ll also gives you sad puppy eyes for being mean. The man has absolutely  _devastating_ puppy eyes. 

* * *

_Anonymous asked: why don't i feel like i'm a good person?_

 

Because you’ve got the inside view. 

See, you see all your nasty thoughts as they pass by. You feel all those mean impulses; you catch every terrible thing you think about a friend; you have to watch yourself procrastinate on important stuff or be lazy when you feel like you should be working. You get front-row seats to all the awfulness that comes with being a person. And you only get that view of  _yourself_ , not of anyone else. So naturally, since you can’t see all the internal flaws in everyone else, it seems like they don’t have them–but you do.

The secret is that everyone has those flaws.

If being a good person is something you strive for–if you keep those nasty thoughts inside your head instead of directing them at other people, if you support your friends instead of pushing them down, if you try your best at what you do–then I promise you, you’re a good person. And even if you fail at that stuff sometimes, all it takes to be a good person is to keep trying.

There’s nothing any more bad about you than there is about loads of other people.

Ask your friends if you’re a good person–when it comes to things like this, they probably see you more clearly than you do yourself. Trust them. If they say “Yes, of course,” then you’ll know you don’t have to worry. If they say no, you can ask them why, and then change those things about yourself.

Just remember that if it seems like everyone else is a better person than you, it’s only because you can’t see what’s happening inside them. Trust me–everyone struggles to do the right thing sometimes. Even Steve.

You’re a good person. Even if you don’t feel like it.


	37. Paste-Pot-Pete and Halloween

  

 

_anonymous  asked: The best thing about combat boots? No one but you will ever know you're wearing fuzzy socks during a mission._

I mean, yeah. You’d  _think_ that. 

Instead, the reality is that if you wear fuzzy socks on a combat mission, the universe can sense your fluff and will conspire against you. So naturally the  _one time_ you wear fuzzy socks on an op will also be the one time you’re fighting Paste-Pot-Pete (Who is apparently a real guy who really does run around doing glue crimes. I hate this century and I need to have a serious talk with Steve and Tony about the quality of villains these days. In my day we fought literal Nazi monsters. Now there’s an overeager dude with a souped-up gluegun. Who I am not allowed to shoot for some reason.) and you’ll wind up with your combat boots glued to the middle of the road in Manhattan. 

And to prevent yourself from getting flattened by a taxi the Hulk threw, you’ll have to jump right out of your boots, revealing your pink and yellow sparkly fuzzy socks to all the world. And to the news station that  _just happens_ to be in the building you’re in front of. 

And then you have to finish the fight in fuzzy socks, which  _of course_  are going to be covered in glue and bits of debris by the end. 

And even though it was totally worth it to kick Paste-Pot-Pete in the face, he did get blood on my fuzzy sock.  Jerk.

* * *

 

_[selfsufficientbaudelaires](http://selfsufficientbaudelaires.tumblr.com/) asked: Bucky, I'm having a really hard time at work (at my dreeam job no less) because of my severe anxiety and depression. Do you have any advice? I'm desperate._

Just remember that you CAN do this. 

This is your dream job. That’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also a huge source of strength! This is the job you love! Let that passion fuel you. Anxiety and depression are a vicious cycle, and it’s easy to let them pull you down and paralyze you, but you’ve got something to fight for! 

Your great advantage and disadvantage is that you’re fighting yourself. You know better than anyone how exactly your anxiety will trip you up, how your depression will weigh you down. If you can, figure out what triggers them (if there’s specific things.) Find ways to combat or bolster yourself against those triggers. If you get stressed out by certain jobs, find ways to help motivate yourself through that–maybe save a task you enjoy to do after one you hate. And if you have friends in the workplace, see if they can help. There’s a decent chance that the things that you find the hardest are things someone else might find easy, and that there’s something they struggle with that you can help with. Real life isn’t like school–helping each other isn’t cheating, it’s good teamwork. 

If this job is important to you, fight for it. Remember why you’re doing it; the things you love about it. Hang on to those things. Look forward to them, let them power you through the bad stuff. And when that gets to be too hard, be merciful with yourself and forgive your own failings, and try again the next day.

Trust a brainwashed amnesiac assassin–love for something is the best weapon you have against the baddies in your own brain. 

* * *

  

_[ry-wolf](https://ry-wolf.tumblr.com/) asked: Hi murder-friend. I'm tired today. Can you tell me a story either involving wolves, embarrassing tony/steve, or a lullaby? I heard you sing really really well. Thanks in advance, and make sure to sleep well, its halloween and nightmares are sure to hit harder._

I will give this my very best shot, friend. 

_Lullaby and good night_  
_Now the mission is over_  
_Time to slip in to suspended_  
_animation for a while!_

_Lullaby and good night_  
_There is plenty to fear_  
_Lullaby and good fight_  
_When you wake you will get wiped!_

…Was that… _not_ comforting? Woopsie. 

* * *

 

 

 

_[aspoonfuloflanguage](https://aspoonfuloflanguage.tumblr.com/) asked: Hey! So I recently got a new job and moved to a new city and don't get me wrong I'm very grateful... but ya girl's stressed, exhausted, and a little bit lonely. Do you have any advice and/or a funny story to help me through the week?_

Last night, Sam went upstate and took his little nieces and nephews out trick-or-treating. Naturally, Steve and Nat and I went with him, to help establish him as “The Coolest Uncle Ever: Even Better Than Uncle Terry, Who Is A Cool Cop And Always Smells Like Vanilla.” Or at least, that’s why Nat and Steve went. I just went to heckle Sam. 

(As an aside: the dawning realization that I experienced when Sam’s sister’s kids came running at him, yelling “Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam!” was incredible.  _Uncle Sam_  hangs out with  _Captain America_. Perfect. )

Anyway, Sam has–I think–six nieces and nephews. I think. They kept running around and it was hard to count. Also, there may have been twins. I’m not sure about that–it may have been one child who kept changing costumes. It made me very grateful that i only ever had to look after Steve and Becca. 

The youngest of the little monsters was named Seth. Seth was three and a half, which he would proudly indicate with his pudgy little fingers whenever prompted. And sometimes without prompting. This was Seth’s first Halloween. As per Sam’s family tradition, Seth was decked out in a worn green dinosaur onesie, which came included with dino-face hood and very plush tail. Every one of the kids wore it at some point, and after Tessa’s (age 7) discovery that dinosaurs had feathers, it now includes a few dozen white feathers sewn onto the ends of the sleeves and tail. 

Seth was delighted with this. He spent most of the pre-trick-or-treating time running around growling at people. 

When all the kids were ready to go, Sam’s sister lined them up next to the door and dished out the rules: stay in a group, don’t leave anyone behind, don’t go into anyone’s house, etc. We adults were told that the kids were allowed to run along the sidewalks, but had to wait with an adult at the end of each block. When she’d gotten confirmations from the whole group, she opened the door and they went roaring out like a stampede of very tiny bison. We followed after. 

The group veered left right out the door. The house is in a suburb, nice and well lit and very safe, so we let them get a little distance on us. Seth was at the back of the pack: his little dino-head tipped down for the charge, pudgy arms and legs pumping like a locomotive, tail like a rudder behind him. 

The rest of the kids charged up the next door neighbor’s driveway. Head down, Seth kept going straight up the sidewalk.

The rest of the group got their candy and bolted towards the next house, easily overtaking the Little Dino That Could. 

Unsure what was happening, Steve and Sam and Nat and I waited at the end of the block. The oldest kids got to us first and compared their loot while we waited. Seth pulled up soon after, having eliminated the going-up-to-houses stage and gained ground on the middle children. When he caught sight of the other kid’s candy, he was visibly confused. 

Sam got down on his level and asked what was up. 

Apparently, a misunderstanding had occurred. Seth believed that Halloween was a  _race_ , and the winners got bags full of candy. No one had actually explained the whole getting-candy-from-strangers part to him. 

Seth was devastated that he’d missed a whole block’s worth of loot, so Steve scooped him up piggyback and took off at a dead run, which is pretty impressive. I once saw Steve outrun a _horse_. He and Seth went full-out. By the time the rest of the kids had gathered with the rest of us, Steve had re-done the whole block. And he only jumped three cars to make it in time. 

Seth’s candy bag was rapidly filled by the neighbors, who managed to stop gaping long enough to extend their candy bowls. Seth himself barely noticed, as he was too busy clinging to Steve’s hair and shrieking. 

Tessa was very jealous, and commandeered me as a steed for the next block. The rest of the kids quickly demanded the same from Nat and Sam. (Sam’s “I do what he does, only slower” was not a great selling point for the kids, who wanted to go  _faster, Sam._ ) 

So we spend the rest of the evening doing piggy-back Halloween speedruns.

Seth got a lot of candy.

 


	38. Star-Spangled Man with a Can and the Plaster Cast Disaster

_Anonymous asked: Buck do you have plans for thanksgiving?_

 

Yeah, I have a plan. Well, it’s technically more of a scheme, I guess. And you guys have to swear not to tell…anyone with common sense, really.

I’m gonna make a Trashcan Turkey.

What is a trashcan turkey, you ask? Let me enlighten you to possibly the most brilliant, terrible, wonderful bird-cooking method I have not yet tried. I’ve talked Clint and Johnny Storm into helping me with this, it’s gonna be a disaster. 

(This is not to be confused with the Dumpster Bird incident, where Sam and Clint both wound up in the same dumpster, and then Hulk thew the whole thing at an evil giant crab, not knowing they were inside. Don’t worry, they were fine. Eventually.)

Anyway, a Trashcan Turkey is exactly what it sounds like: a turkey cooked inside a trash can. You take a long, sturdy wooden stake and drive it into the ground (or better yet, take some rebar and weld a crossbeam so the turkey can’t slide down) and then cover the stake and the surrounding ground in tin foil. If you wanna catch the turkey drippings, you can put a bundt cake pan on the ground with the stake in the center. Then you mount the turkey on the stake, all seasoned however you like. 

Then you take a new–and that part’s key– _new_ metal trash can and put it top-down over the turkey. 

And then you light a bunch of charcoal on fire. 

You heap the burning charcoal around the base of the trash can and put more burning charcoal on top. I’d recommend a shovel for that job, if you don’t have a fireproof metal hand or a really flammable inflammable dude to just grab them directly. Thanks, Johnny.

Then you keep it all burning for awhile. I’ve been told that the formula is 1 hour for a 10 pound turkey, plus ten minutes per additional pound. 

When the time’s up, you remove the coals and the trash can. That part can be a little dangerous, because everything’s very hot, but again: fireproof friends/hands. 

You should have, at that point, a perfectly cooked Trashcan Turkey.

I’m sure why you can see why this is appealing to me. There’s fire, food, potential for disaster–it’s all the most important parts of life combined in one family holiday event.

There’s no way this goes well. 

It’s gonna be awesome. 

 

* * *

 

 

_Anonymous asked: Hey buckmeister 5000 it’s ya boi. What advice do you have for someone who wants to make life a little easier on their friend who’s going through a super rough time?_

 

Food. 

Look, buddy, I am terrible at being comforting, but if there’s anything I learned growing up in the Depression, when times were rough for pretty much everyone, it’s that there’s never a time when a gift of food is a bad idea. 

If you can cook–even if there’s only one dish you do well–make them a thing. If you can’t cook, get them something pre-made or takeout. Bring enough that there’s leftovers. (If you’re comfort-cooking for Steve or Thor, take a family meal recipe and multiply it by six.)

There’s something about food that expresses that you care about someone’s health and well-being, and doing it spontaneously shows that you think about them even when they’re not right in front of you. If money’s tight for them, it’s one meal they don’t have to worry about paying for, and even if not, it’s one less meal they have to prepare for themselves. If they’re far away, call a delivery to their house and pay for it online. 

You don’t have to talk about it. You don’t even have to admit it’s from you. I leave meals for Tony in the workshop when he’s stressed, and I make Clint cupcakes whenever he breaks a bone (often) and leave out hot cups of chai whenever Bruce has to talk to the press. So far the only person who knows I’m doing it is Steve. and probably Nat. 

Food, my friend. That’s my number-one way to say you care without having to words.

* * *

 

_[rachaelmhill](http://rachaelmhill.tumblr.com/) asked: Buck, I've been feeling like my head's splitting open on-and-off since Tuesday, and now I'm getting other symptoms too. Please distract me with embarrassing stories about Steve? i love those._

When Steve was twelve, he broke his arm. 

Surprisingly, it wasn’t in a fight--he was carrying a twenty-pound bag of potatoes up the stairs for his ma and he tripped. went down the whole flight, potatoes bouncing everywhere. After he’d recovered a bit from the tumble, he sat up, looked at old Mrs. Mackinnon-- who was just coming out of her apartment--and said “Sorry for the mess.” And then he looked down and noticed that his forearm was bent in the middle. And then he started crying. 

So his Ma ran him to the hospital and they set his arm and put it in a cast. 

And thus began the First Era of the Unstoppable Steve. (The second era was after Erskine made a limited edition Jumbo Steve, and the third was Steve: Reheated.)

See, if you’ve ever had a plaster cast, you know that those things are shockingly sturdy. Steve went from being a sixty pound asthmatic with rage issues to being a sixty pound asthmatic with rage issues and a right hook like a piledriver. At first, his arm was too tender for him to do much, but after it started healing up, and he started getting in fights again, he figured out that his right arm was better than a baseball bat when it came to hitting stuff. That plaster cast started white, but it didn’t take long for it to get brownish with dirt and bloodstains. He still got his ass kicked, but it took a bit more work, and the other guys actually looked like they’d been in a fight. 

Anyway, Steve was half in love with that cast.  Sometimes I thought he never wanted to take if off, and if it hadn’t messed with his drawing, I think he’d’ve worn it for about a year. But about a week before it was supposed to be taken off anyway, Stevie got in a fight with Gerry, the shoemaker’s kid from up the block. Gerry was a mean sonofagun. He was thirteen, and he’d hit puberty early, so he had a solid eight inches on wee Stevie. And he was as dumb as a box of bricks.

He hated Steve. Steve was tiny, sure, but he was sharp as a tack and well-liked. There wasn’t an old lady within miles that didn’t love Stevie, so he was always getting penny candy for running errands for them. Gerry had a habit of cornering Stevie in alleyways and beating on him until candy fell out. Steve had a habit of not letting him do it without a fight.

Gerry cornered Stevie and started shoving at him. Steve shoved back. Gerry shoved harder. Stevie stumbled, and Gerry threw a punch. Stevie took it full in the face, and then swung back, full-force, with that sledgehammer cast of his. 

Gerry dodged. 

Steve plowed his cast into the old brick alley wall. The brick shattered. 

Stevie’s cast broke. So did two of Stevie’s fingers.

Steve started screaming.  

Gerry ran. 

Now, understand--it was old, old brick, but all Gerry saw was little crazy Stevie Rogers punch a hole in a brick wall and then start shrieking like a berserker. Rat-brain Gerry wasn’t bright, but he knew a losing battle when he saw one, so he ran like the Hulk himself had just showed up in that alley. Smartest thing he could’ve done, really, because I’d just shown up and if he’d kept after Stevie, I’d’ve handed him his ass. 

As it was, I pried Stevie’s cast off and walked him back to the hospital. The doctors said his arm was plenty healed and didn’t need a new cast, and splinted up his fingers. 

Steve didn’t like the splints nearly as much as he’d liked the cast. They made absolutely  _ terrible _ weapons. 

  
  
  



	39. A Very Winter Christmas

Over on the Tumblr, we're doing a fun holiday collaboration! I've written up some parody Bucky lyrics for popular holiday songs, and anyone who wants to participate is doing a cover! The tags for this are the usual #buckykingofmemes tag as well as my holiday tag, [#deck the halls (and villains)](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/deck-the-halls-%28and-villains%29). If anyone here would like to participate, you're welcome to post a cover and tag me, or post to youtube and send me a link! Have fun, everyone! -Mod Hell

* * *

 

**Winter Soldier’s Gunnin’ You Down**

(To the tune of Santa Claus is Coming to Town)

_You better watch out, you better not cry_

_You’ll probably bleed out, I’m tellin’ you why_

_Winter Soldier’s gunnin’ you down_

_He’s got a hit list, he’s starting a fight_

_He’s clenching his fist, it’s shiny and bright_

_Winter Soldier’s gunnin’ you down!_

_He sees you when you’re sleeping_

_He knows when you’re awake_

_His aim is really fucking good and he’s gonna assassinate_

_You better watch out, you better not cry_

_You’ll probably bleed out, I’m tellin’ you why_

_Winter Soldier’s gunnin’ you down_

_He’s yanking out wheels and firing guns_

_If you were smart you’d probably run_

_Winter Soldier’s gunning you down!_

_Winter Soldier’s gunning you down!_

* * *

**I Just Want To Buy Plums  
**

(To the tune of Jingle Bells)

_Dashing through the streets_

_On a stolen motorbike_

_Jumping over cars_

_Fleeing for my life!_

_War Machine’s up high_

_There’s some angry cat guy_

_I’m adding to my list of crimes by_

_Running traffic lights!_

_Oh! A-P-B out on me! Please leave me alone!_

_Superheroes after me but i want to go home!_

_Oh! A-P-B out on me! Please leave me alone!_

_Please call Steve, he’ll vouch for me_

_I just wanted some plums!_

* * *

**Old Stevie**

(To the tune of White Christmas)

_I’m dreaming of the old Stevie_

_That little punk I used to know_

_He was much smaller–still a brawler_

_In Brooklyn oh so long ago._

_I’m dreaming of the old Stevie_

_With every Nazi that I fight_

_Before we got frozen…before the explosions_

_The trenchfoot, marching and frostbite…_

_I’m dreaming of the old Stevie_

_I’m dreaming of the old Stevie_

_Who had less muscles but more brains_

_Sure, he’s less sickly and he heals quickly_

_But he keeps on jumping out of planes_

* * *

**Buchanan Barnes**

(To the tune of O Tannenbaum)

_Buchanan Barnes, Buchanan Barnes,_

_How metal are your phalanges!_

_Your fist so shiny and so bright_

_(Not great for sneaking in the night)_

_Buchanan Barnes, Buchanan Barnes,_

_How metal are your phalanges!_

* * *

**Bucky the Asset**

(To the tune of Frosty the Snowman)

_Bucky the Asset_

_Was a sad and tortured soul_

_With a big trench knife_

_And a heart that froze and_

_A homicidal goal_

_Bucky the Asset_

_Is a ghost story they say_

_He was lost in snow_

_But the nazis know_

_He can thaw and be re-froze_

_There must’ve been some science_

_To that evil brainwipe chair_

_For when they placed it on his head_

_He went all “vacant stare”_

_Bucky the Asset_

_Was as dead as dead could be_

_Except on days_

_When he went to slay_

_Certain wealthy families!_

_Bucky the Asset_

_Knew he’d shaped the century_

_So when Steve said “Run!”_

_He just shot his gun_

_And said “Bucky? That’s not me.“_

_Over the city_

_With a big gun in his hand_

_Strutting here and there_

_All around midair_

_Where they made a final stand_

_He fought with Steve who yelled out “Please–_

_You’re Bucky–please just stop!”_

_And he paused for a long moment when_

_Steve let his shield drop!_

_Bucky the Asset_

_Had to hurry and escape_

_But he waved goodbye saying,_

_“Don’t you die_

_I’ll be back again some day”_

_Punchity, Punch, Punch_

_Punchity, Punch, Punch_

_Look at Bucky go_

_Punchity, Punch, Punch_

_Punchity, Punch, Punch_

_Who’s Bucky–he don’t know!_


	40. Hanukkah Song, Creeps, and the Pigeon Emperor

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked: Hey, there are these two creepy guys that keep trying to get with me even though I have told them both “no I am not interested” many many times. At one point one of them told me he really wanted to have sex with me and would wait as look as it took for it. I don’t know how to get rid of them, do you have any advice on dealing with suck creeps? xo_

I’ve consulted Natasha, and she’s given some suggested responses:

“It’s going to be a long wait, buddy. Have you considered cryosleep?”

“Sorry, I have this thing called WillMacePushyDouchebags Disease. It's manageable most of the time, but I get really bad allergic reactions to people who can’t take no for an answer, and they break out in burning, itchy hives. Because I mace them.”

“Hey, you know what really turns me on? Respecting my boundaries and backing the fuck off forever.”

Nat also says you should separately agree to go on a date with each of them, set up the same time and place, and trick them into going on a date with each other. 

Darcy suggests: “Think of me like the game of operation: if you touch me, you will immediately suffer from a strong, electric shock, on account of how I will taze you.”

More practically, have you told them  _explicitly_  that you’re really. really not interested? Not now, not later, not playing hard to get.  Guys can be really bad at reading in to things and getting the subtext. 

Tell somebody about it–-a friend who’s with you frequently when they’re around, or your boss if it’s at work. Make it clear that you’re uncomfortable around them and would prefer to not be left alone or trapped in conversation with them. Use the buddy system. 

And as much as I hate the ‘she’s only off limits because she’s someone else’s, not because she said no’ mindset, it does work sometimes. So I happily volunteer to be your fake boyfriend forever. Today was our first date. I brought you flowers, we went to the humane society to pet puppies, and then got ice cream. Next week we’re going to a roller rink and then walking down a street with lots of Christmas lights.  I guarantee that they cannot top that level of suaveness.

* * *

 

 

 

[rachaelmhill](http://rachaelmhill.tumblr.com/) asked:

OK, I officially feel like I've been hit by a truck. More embarrassing Steve stories, if you please? I need distractions.

Steve has really, really good night vision. 

I do too–I drank the same superjuice, just a little more watered down–but back during the war I didn’t really tell anyone about that. So since Steve’s vision was best, he was always the point man on nighttime operations with the Howlies. This worked out pretty well–he could spot terrain problems and walk us around them, and he could see a Nazi scout coming well before he saw us. 

But every once in a while, some particularly sneaky bastard would get the drop on him. 

On one particular occasion, we were on our way back from an op, and crossing through a disputed area in the evening. We’d been warned that the Nazis were trying to send spies through, so we were on the lookout. Steve was on point. 

Somehow, despite having the eyes of a goddam bald eagle, Steve did not see this guy coming. 

The guy–a Nazi spy–was hardly invisible. He had a big, bulky backpack, civilian clothes, and a Walther PPK.  He popped out of a shrub with his pistol and Steve never saw him coming–but luckily Steve’s got the instincts of a tiny angry human target who used to get jumped in dark alleys on a regular basis, and he bopped him with the shield before the Nazi could fire. Well, i say bopped–it was the sort of wild swing you take with a frypan when someone startles you in the kitchen. 

The spy flew a good three feet through the air and landed on his side–

and  _exploded into a flock of pigeons._

After the fact, we realized that the spy’s backpack was actually a wooden cage containing half a dozen homing pigeons, intended to carry back messages from Allied territory. When he fell, it split apart, releasing a bunch of terrified birds to fly back, empty handed (empty winged?), to a Nazi base. But at the time, it was like a magic trick–one moment there was a Nazi spy, the next, a flock of birds! 

The look of shock and surprise on Steve’s face was incredible. I could see on his face a split second where he asked himself _C_ _an I punch people so hard they turn into birds now? Did I grow a new superpower? What the hell was in that serum?_

He realized the truth moments later, but I could see it–the brief seconds where flashes of a pigeon empire flew through his head.

* * *

_**Roger, Captain Rogers!** _

(To the tune of the Dreidel Song)

_I have a little radio_

_For talking in the field_

_And when I use it badly_

_Cap says “Keep ‘em sealed!”_

_Roger, Captain Rogers!_

_No puns about the bomb_

_Roger, Captain Rogers!_

_No chatter on the comms._

_I have a little walkie_

_For secret late-night ops_

_But if say a swear word,_

_Stevie says to stop_

_Language, Language, Language!_

_No swearing on the line!_

_Language, Language, Language!_

_I guess that’s fuckin fine!_

_I have a little earpiece_

_For undercover work_

_But Stevie overhears me_

_Call some assclown a “jerk”_

_Roger, Captain Rogers!_

_No jokes about his mom_

_Roger, Captain Rogers!_

_No chatter on the comms._

_I have a little wire_

_I wear under my shirt_

_But then when I get injured_

_Steve hears the things I blurt_

_Language, Language, Language!_

_No swearing on the line!_

_Language, Language, Language!_

_I guess that’s fuckin fine!_

_I have a special playlist_

_For flights in the Quinjet_

_Stevie says to mute it ,_

_But whoopsie, I forget!_

_Roger, Captain Rogers!_

_No awesome winter songs!_

_Roger, Captain Rogers!_

_No chatter on the comms._

* * *

 


	41. Angry Murder Strut

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Anonymous  asked: Hey Bucky, do you have any good self defense suggestions for a teeny and awkward college kid who has to walk everywhere at night? I’ve got no car and the busses don’t run late. Thanks!_

 

 

 

Keep your head up and your eyes open. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t wear both headphones if you’re listening to music; you need to hear what’s happening. If someone’s looking at you, look back–you want to be able to describe them later if you have to. No need to stare them down, but in my experience little black greasepaint around the eyes never hurts. 

Keep an eye on the shadows and reflections–long low streetlights can alert you to someone coming up behind you. Unless that person is Natasha. Then you should just resign yourself to death. 

Murder strut, don’t slink–do your best to look like somebody who would put up a fight with nothing but the way you walk. 

And if you want to arm yourself, choose wisely. Pick something you know you can use that’s legal in your area–the last thing you need is to get arrested for tazing somebody. Practice with it, even if it’s mace; whip it out, pop the cap, get ready to spray. Practice, practice, practice. 

And pick something you could handle having used against you. Any weapon you introduce to combat–especially one you’re not competent with–can be taken from you and used against you, which is why you’re better off with mace or a taser than something capable of dealing permanent or lethal damage. If you don’t want to get shot, don’t carry a gun; if you don’t want to get stabbed, don’t carry a knife.  I carry around a rocket launcher because I’ve been grenaded a couple times and I'm pretty much cool with it. And also it really deters pickpockets.

Whatever you pick, keep it handy. If your mace is at the bottom of your backpack, it will do you exactly zero good in a pinch. Figure out a way to carry whatever you’re gonna use in a way that you have ready access to it, and then make that a habit. If all you have is keys, have them ready to claw with. If all you have is a robot murderfist, surgically attach it to your body so you don’t lose track of it.

And finally, scream. Scream like Tony just walked in on you in the shower. Scream like Thor just set a car on your toe again. The threat of attracting attention is enough of a deterrent for many people. And also it's fun. Hydra disapproved of my hellbeast combat shrieking so much that they gave me that fun and flirty facemask so I’d stop. But there’s nothing stopping me now! Draw attention to yourself. 

I hope that helps!

 

* * *

 

_Anonymous  asked: Hey Buckmeister, do you have any tips for when you have the urge to become violent(throw things, hit people, etc)but cannot? You are the best my dude._

 

I…generally do just become violent? In my experience, the situation almost always calls for it. But if you’re not one of the unlucky bastards that has to deal with both Reed Richards and Dr. Doom on a regular basis, probably violence is not the answer.

Breathe. Focus on breathing. Count your inhales to seven, hold for six, exhale for five. Ignore whatever is making you mad and focus on something you can control. Clench and un-clench your hands if that helps, or calibrate and re-calibrate your robot arm. Count finger taps. Leave the situation if you can.    
Any argument you’re having that’s escalated to the point that you’re near violent is no longer a productive conversation. You’re not in a mindset where you can talk rationally or make compromises, and neither is whoever or whatever you’re mad at. Nothing helpful will come out of it at that point, and you’ll probably do something you regret, so leave or tune out until you’re not mad anymore. 

Once you’re away from the person or thing causing you to feel violent, do something to help yourself calm down. I cook or read or work out–something that takes enough of my focus that I can stop thinking about how mad I am. But sometimes I feel like i have to do something aggressive to get it out of my system, so I go use a punching bag or destroy something I’ve set aside to be demolished. Tearing a cardboard box into pieces can be good for that, or ripping an old phone book to shreds. Don’t destroy stuff as a way to intimidate someone or wreck their stuff–just get the destructive urge out of your system. Doombots are great for that. After, take a little while to cool down. 

If it’s a reoccurring problem with a specific person or people, sit down and talk with them sometime as part of a non-argument conversation. Explain that when you get that angry, you feel the urge to be violent and you don’t want to express that, and ask that if you have to bow out of an argument later they respect that and not try to finish the argument right away. And later, if you do leave during an argument, follow up. Come back after you’re calm and explain what the problem was, then listen when they explain their part. Don’t interrupt, even if you disagree. Then genuinely try to find a middle ground. 

It’s okay to get mad about stuff. There are things in the world that should be reacted to with anger. But you have to control it, not let it control you. 

 

* * *

  _Pat asked: Hey Mister Bucky, I use a cane due to mobility issues and wanted to know if you could suggest a way I could still do the murder strut with it? I need more space to walk than most others, like people literally walk into the stick, so think the murder strut is warranted on an everyday basis. Plus I don't want people to think they can mess me with because I'm disabled. Thanks in advance Your fellow angry disabled person._ 

Luckily for you, the murder strut’s not actually about strutting – it’s about  _attitude._ Just express your homicidal mindset through body language! Which is totally doable as long as you have a body. JARVIS and FRIDAY are understandably terrible at murder strutting, on account of having server banks instead of bodies. 

There’s no one perfect way to murder strut – do whatever works for you. 

Try to keep a rhythm to your steps, and as much as you can, keep your head up and shoulders back and square. Chin down but spine straight. Don’t slouch or slink; you want to look confident, not sneaky. Don’t be afraid to occupy the space. Look at the people who are walking towards you – stare them down until they notice you if needed; people have a sense for when they’re being stared at, and that’ll usually get them to pay attention. And then look  _through_  them – they are only minor obstacles on your homicidal mission. Your body should say that you are going in a straight line forwards – anyone or anything in your way is gonna get flattened. 

If people continue to mess with your cane, I hear they make them with swords inside. That might do the job.


	42. Don't Nap, Steve's Being Stupid (But At Least He's In Good Company)

_Anonymous asked:_ _Do all those ridges in Bucky's arm make it hard to clean it up for passover?_

 

Oh yeah–the first Passover after I got back, I was going after my finger joints with a toothbrush, trying to get out motor oil and crumbs and stuff. Luckily, Tony wandered in and went “You do realize we have a dishwasher,” which was sort of an incredible epiphany. So now I just detach the arm and run it through the dishwasher.

Much simpler.

(As much as I love the simpler dishwasher process, Steve did not love opening the dishwasher to find a severed arm. That was…less great.)

* * *

  


_Anonymous asked:_ _Hey Bucky what do the Avengers wear for pajamas? Anyone sleep buck naked?_

 

Well, at least one Avenger occasionally sleeps starkers. Three guesses who.

…you were wrong, it’s not Tony. It’s Thor.

But actually, based on what everybody was wearing during that surprise attack last week, nah, there’s not actually many nude sleepers in the Tower, or at least not anymore. Probably because we get woken up by evil robots or flying monkeys on a pretty regular basis.

Tony’s a t-shirt or tanktop and sweatpants guy, usually with a nerdy pun. He also has a ‘secret’ collection of Avengers flannel pants that he likes to pretend were a gag gift that he hates. He’s not fooling anybody–we all know he bought them himself and loves them. He had Spidey pjs before they even hit the stores.

Bruce has some really nice bright silk sleep pants from Kolkata that he likes–they have a super wide drawstring waistband that will literally fit the Hulk.

Steve sleeps in boxers and one of his super-tight tees, and I don’t have any idea how that can possibly be comfortable. Sam’s the same, unsurprisingly.

Clint has dozens of pairs of fuzzy pj pants–he’s been griping about his hello kitty ones going missing. But for some reason he rarely actually sleeps in them. He just lounges around in pjs and then actually sleeps in shorts and ancient tees. Nat tends to sleep in shorts and tank tops, but she also slinks around in silk bathrobes sometimes.

I’ve got a couple pairs of comfy black sweatpants I like, and a pair of Captain America pj pants I will deny owning until my dying breath. But no, I don’t sleep naked, otherwise I’d have nowhere to stash my sleepy-time knives.

I don’t like being unarmed.

* * *

  


_Anonymous_ _asked:_ _So what are the most absurd stories you've told people about how you lost your arm?_

 

I tell people all sorts of stuff, and you would not _believe_ what people will fall for. I’ve found it’s best to give as little explanation as possible.  So in no particular order, here’s a few:

  * I used to juggle chainsaws
  * I got hungry
  * I'm missing _WHAT_
  * I tried to high-five a moving bus
  * I'm an incredibly absent-minded person, I guess I just forgot it
  * That’s what you get for standing too close to the bread-slicing machine
  * I did the hokey-pokey too hard
  * I arm wrestled Thor and lost
  * You would not believe how aggressive a hungry guinea pig can be
  * I made a deal with Tony Stark for coffee, and he does not take coffee deals lightly



So basically, I just say whatever pops into my head first.

* * *

  


_Anonymous_ _asked:_ _So I don't know if this has been asked before, and I'm also too lazy to look, but what was your reaction to finding out all the dumb shit Steve has done? Like jumping out of planes w/out a parachute, stuff like that._

 

Which time? The first time, when I left him unattended for a few months and he promptly volunteered to be Howard Stark’s own personal build-a-bear, or the second time, when I unwisely hurtled to my demise, leaving Steve to immediately careen into the nearest iceberg? Or all the times after, when I was off murdering people and taking chill naps and he was prancing around in spangly pants, kicking aliens in the face and making friends with the only people on the face of the planet who are stupid enough to enable his bad decisions?

Look, the first time? When Steve pried me off a slab in a nazI prison camp? I legitimately believed I was dreaming. Steve was suddenly a six foot tall beefcake, some nazI skeleton pulled off his own face, I jumped over a giant explosion pit and didn’t die, and all my prison buddies were running around with blue laser guns and a tank. This is prime dream material; I _DID NOT_ think any of it was real. It didn’t sink in that this was reality until we’d been walking back towards base for at least six hours. And then.

Well. I got realllllly mad at Steve.

It was a long walk back. I think I actually lost my voice twice.

Anyways, I learned my lesson after that, and never left Steve to do anything by himself if I could help it.

By the time I had my whole brain back in this century, I’d done a fair bit of stupid stuff myself, and couldn’t properly yell at Steve without return fire.

So instead I brought in the big gun.

If you bribe her with the right pair of shoes, Pepper Potts will give a national hero of your choosing a very moving ‘I thought you knew better than to jump out of planes, we all believed in you and we’re so disappointed’ speech.  It’s very effective. I figured, if she could keep Tony from accidentally getting himself killed while rocketing around in a stainless steel onesie, she can talk Steve into occasionally actually using a parachute.

It worked.

For about a week.

But hey, that’s still progress!

 


End file.
